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A MEMORIAL VOLUME 

TO 

IRELAND'S INCORRUPTIBLE SON, 

PATRIOT AND STATESMAN, ^ 

Charles Stewart Parnell. 

HIS BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENTS. 

THE GREAT SACRIFICES AND HEROIC DEEDS 

OF A LIFE WHICH HE 

Devoted to His Country. 
portraits and biographical sketches 

Of the most notable characters engaged in the struggle for Irish Self Government. 
A. GEAPHIC ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENTS BETWEEN 1848 AND ISTO. 

BY 

ROBT. F. WALSH, 

AUTHOR OF "THE LAND AGITATION AND TRADE," "THE INDUSTRIAL POSSIBILITIES OF IRELAND," " THB DEVELOP- 
MENT OF IRISH FISHERIES," "NORA," "SANTA LUCIA," ETC., ETC. 

INCLUDING 

THE LIEE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 

OF THE 

GREAT EMANCIPATOR, £ ^S""7 ^ 

DANIEL O'CONNELL, 

WITH AN OUTLINE OF 
IMPORTANT EVENTS T.3ST IRISH H I S T O ~Et "Z\ 

BY 

THOMAS CLARKE LUBY. 

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED, 

NEW YORK: 
GAY BROTHERS & CO. 



Copyright, 1892, by 
GAY BROTHERS & COMPANY. 



GAY BROTHERS 4. COMPANY, 

34 READE STREET 

NEW YORK. 



Hftte Volume 



DZEZDIO-A^TIEID 



Jrisft ftace# 



PUBLISHERS' INTRODUCTION. 



Upon the death of the late great leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, it occurred to 
the publishers of the present volume that the Irish people of America had never 
been presented with a faithful mirror reflecting the wonderful achievements of the 
two great leaders of the 19th century — O'Connell and Parnell — and they considered it 
fitting to link together these two names as being dear to the hearts of the Irish 
people as are those of Washington and Lincoln in this Republic. Associated in this 
manner, this work will be read with double interest and better understood. Daniel 
O'Connell secured Catholic Emancipation for the people of Ireland ; but, in the 
words of that distinguished American, Chauncey M. Depew, "The incorruptible 
Charles Stewart Parnell organized and led his countrymen to within sight of the 
promised land of self-government." However, this conception would not be com- 
plete without an account of the early historical events — in the compilation of which 
the best authorities have been consulted and the most instructive incidents por- 
trayed from the earliest times to the period of the Union, when O'Connell appeared 
upon the scene. His life was compiled by Thomas Clarke Luby, A.B., T.C.D. As 
Mr. Luby occupied a conspicuous position in the literary field, and had the honor of 
being personally acquainted with O'Connell, he needs no introduction here. How- 
ever, the task of preparing the life and brilliant achievements of Charles Stewart 
Parnell and of the connecting historical sketch has fallen to the lot of Mr. Robert F. 
Walsh, late special Amei'ican correspondent of the Dublin Freeman's Journal and 
author of several volumes upon the industrial interests of Ireland, which received 
favorable criticism from the pens of Mr. Gladstone and the late John Bright. The 
Royal Commission, appointed by the Imperial Parliament of 1884, to inquire into 
the industrial possibilities of Ireland, did him the honor of embodying in the bill 
presented by them copious extracts from his work on Irish Fisheries. Mr. 
Walsh is a graduate of the famous College of Saint Stanislaus, and afterward 
attended Saint Colman's College for the purpose of taking a higher course — where he 
was a pupil of Archbishop Croke and the Right Rev. William Fitzgerald. His 
intimate personal acquaintance with Mr. Parnell and the other leaders, and his 
practical knowledge of Irish industrial affairs, eminently befit him to give a valuable 
portrayal of the life and achievements of Mr. Parnell and his contemporaries. 



CONTENTS. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

CHAPTER I. 

'Why Mr. Parnell was so important a Factor in Irish Politics — His Boyhood, Early Life, and 
Antecedents — The distinguished Lineage of the Irish Leader — A Comparison between his 
Life and those of O'Connell, etc., etc.— How his Patriotic Instinct was Aroused— Why 
Irishmen should honor Him I 

CHAPTER II. 

Mr. Parnell's first public Speech — He is Defeated for Dublin County — His Election for Meath — 
Isaac Butt — Mr. Parnell in America — Joseph G. Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell con- 
ceive the Policy of Obstruction — Mr. Lecky's Comparison of Irish Pauperism — Comparison 
of the Lives of Grattan, O'Connell, and Parnell 10 

CHAPTER III. 

Mr. Parnell's Mission in America — The Famine of 1879 — Deposition of Mr. Shaw — The Election 
of Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Race — The Consolidation of the Atoms — Gladstone's 
Treachery 49 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Land Agitation — Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Nation — The sudden change of opinion 
of the Irish Priesthood and Episcopacy — The Land Act of 1881 — Coercion — Gladstone and 
Parnell — Mr. Parnell arrested — His Historical Speech at Wexford 71 

CHAPTER V. 

The Consequences of Forster's Coercion Act — The Arrears Bill prepared in Kilmainham Prison 
by Mr. Parnell — Ladies Arrested — Evictions in 1881 — The Kilmainham Treaty — Deposi- 
tion of Chief Secretary Forster — The Phcenix Park Tragedy — Captain O'Shea's Speech on 
the Arrears Bill 97 

CHAPTER VI. 
Mr. Parnell's Sympathy for even the Prison Officials — The Times Forgery — John Stuart's Esti- 
mate of Mr. Parnell — General Election of 1885 — Bentham on the Theory of Legislation — 
Parnell and the Irish Fisheries — The Home Rule Struggle — Parnell, Gladstone, and the 
Tories ' 115 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Parnell and the Unionist Parliament — Renewal of Evictions — The Plan of Campaign— The 
Ponsonby Estate — Mr. Balfour as Chief Secretary — The Mitchelstown Murders — The Co- 
ercion Act of July 17, 1887 — Imprisonment of William O'Brien and John Mandeville — 
John Mandeville's Death, and Debates, etc., relating to it 148 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The O'Shea Divorce Case— The Secession of Mr. Parnell's Followers— His Refusal to Resign the 
Leadership— His Reasons— Patriotic to the Last — An Englishman's Review of Gladstone's 
Unreliability — Mr. Parnell's Death — His Last Words — The entire Political World shocked 
by his sudden Demise — His Funeral, etc., etc 17° 



CONTENTS. 



IRELAND FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Causes which led to Irish Disaffection — Sir Charles Russell's Opinion — Why Irishmen agi- 
tated for Repeal of the Union — Antiquity of Irish Writings — The Fiscal Condition of Ire- 
land at the time of the Union — Gladstone's Treachery — Richard Cobden and the Times . . . 213 

CHAPTER II. 

Sir Charles Russell on the Predisposing Causes of Crime— Lord Dufferin's Statement — The Tithe 

Agitation 222 

CHAPTER III. 

The Young Ireland Movement — Events between 1848 and 1865 — James Stephens — The Fenian 
" Conspiracy" — John O'Mahony — An Explanation of why the Irish People were justified in 
these Uprisings— The Kilclooney Wood Incident— Corydon the Informer 259 

LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

CHAPTER I. 
Birth — Family — Scenery of Ireland in general, and of Kerry in particular 1 

CHAPTER II. 

Childhood of O'Connell — Paul Jones off the coast of Kerry — O'Connell masters the alphabet 
quickly — His fear of disgrace — Captain Cook's "Voyage round the World " — Nomadic gen- 
try — Early Anticipations of greatness 7 

CHAPTER III. 

Youth and early manhood of O'Connell — O'Connell at Louvain, St. Omer's and Douay — In dan- 
ger during the French Revolution — Anecdote of John and Henry Sheares and the execu- 
tion of Louis XVI 18 

CHAPTER IV. 
Theobald Wolfe Tone and the " United Irishmen " — Peep-o'-Day boys and Defenders — Orange 
atrocities — Tone in Bantry Bay — Injustice and tyranny of Lord Camden's government — 
Secession of Grattan and his friends from the House of Commons — O'Connell's comments 
on this step — The Texel expedition — Arrests at Bond's house — Death of Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald — Rebellion of '98 horrors — John P. Curran defends the United Irishmen — Death 
of Wolfe Tone and others — The Union — Clare and Castlereagh— Daniel O'Connell's first 
appearance on the political stage as an orator 38 

CHAPTER V. 

Pictures, anecdotes, and incidents of O'Connell's career at the Bar — O'Connell travelling on cir- 
cuit — O'Connell in his study — O'Connell in the courts— O'Connell's life valuable to his 
clients — Curious instance of O'Connell's professional penetration and quickness ; a tale of 
a fly — Illustrations of O'Connell's rapidity of conception and promptitude of action 133 

CHAPTER VI. 
Lady Morgan's sketch of O'Connell — More of O'Connell's bar-anecdotes and other reminiscences 
— Value of an ugly nose — A lesson in cow-stealing — Unpremeditated oratory — O'Connell 
on the Scotch and English jury-systems and capital punishment, etc. — Queer anecdote of 
Sir Jonah Barrington ; the pawnbroker outwitted — Escape of a robber — An Orangeman 
who always liked to have O'Connell as his counsel — Odd story of a physician— Anecdotes 
of Judges Boyd and Lefroy ; O'Connell saves the life of a client — He defies Baron McClel- 
and— A judge sternly reproved — Anecdotes about Judge Day and Bully Egan 145 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 
State of the Catholic cause at the commencement of O'Connell's political career — Pitt's return 
to office — His power weakened — His falseness to Ireland and the Catholics — The Castle 
uses its influence with Lord Fingal to keep back the Catholic petition — Coronation of Na- 
poleon — The Pope's allocution — The Catholics calumniated — Continued suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus Act — Duplicity of the viceroy, Lord Hardwicke— Pitt's perfidy 182 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The "No-Popery Ministry" show their teeth — Jack Giffard, "the dog in office" — Grattan's In- 
vective against Giffard — Insurrection and Arms Acts — Noble conduct of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan — The bishop of Quimper's pastoral — Furious intolerance — The " Shanavests " 
and " Caravats " — Liberal Protestants — Divisions of the Catholic Committee ; O'Connell's 
views prevail 203 

CHAPTER IX. 
Orange murders and massacres — Fight between the Kings county militia and the Orange yeo- 
manry — The " The No-Popery government connive at the Orange atrocities — Insurrection 
acts — Assemblage of Orange delegates in 1808 — Disingenuousness of the leading Orange- 
men — O'Connell on the Orangemen — Government partiality 214 

CHAPTER X. 

Aggregate meeting at Fishamble Street Theatre — Percy Bysshe Shelley declares for Catholic 
emancipation and repeal of the union — Suppression of the Catholic Committee — It is suc- 
ceeded by the Catholic Board — Powerful speech of O'Connell ; his onslaught on Sir Charles 
Saxton and Wellesley Pole — Dissensions between the aristocratic and popular sections of 
the Catholic movement — Lord French and the Edinburgh Review assail the Catholic law- 
yers — Edmund Burke on the appointment of Irish Catholic bishops by the Crown — O'Con- 
nell rouses the Irish Catholics from the torpor of serfdom ; his daring denunciations of , 
tyranny 240 

CHAPTER XI. 

The famous "Witchery" resolutions— Commotion and fury caused by them— O'Connell de- 
nounces the regent's violation of his pledges to the Catholics — His regret on account of 
Lord Moira's weakness — Moira's nobleness in '98 ; he disappoints the expectations of the 
Catholics in 1812 — O'Connell tells the people to distrust the ministry, to trust themselves 
alone — Apparent prospect of immediate emancipation in 1812 264 

CHAPTER XII. 

Lord Aberdeen's question in the House of Lords — Meeting of the Catholics of Dublin at Kilmain- 

ham — O'Connell's oration, etc., etc 278 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Slow progress of the cause of emancipation — Napoleon's approaching downfall — England's pros- 
perity Ireland's bane — Grattan's bill and Canning's clauses — Failure of the bill — Its repudi- 
ation by the majority of the Irish Catholics — Vote of thanks to the Irish prelates — The 
aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics opposed to the vote ; Counsellor Bellew and his 
brother Sir Edward — Corruption of the former — O'Connell "demolishes " his antagonists — 
Misunderstanding between O'Connell and Lord Fingal on the subject of the regent's 
pledge 291 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Chequered fortunes of O'Connell and the Catholic cause in 1813 — Catholic meetings throughout 
Ireland — Bitterness and fury of the government press against O'Connell — O'Connell's 
dauntless and defiant bearing in the teeth of adverse circumstances — Lord Whitworth 
suppresses the Catholic Board by proclamation — Noble conduct of John Philpot Curran . . 323 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Catholic cause languishes for some years after the suppression of the Catholic Board — Final 
overthrow of Napoleon — Meanness of England in her hour of triumph — Peel and his Peel- 
ers — He creates the class of stipendiary magistrates — Fall of the war prices, and agricultural 
distress in Ireland — Peel's cheap ejectment laws — He resists inquiry into the condition of 
Ireland, and renews insurrection acts — Ireland scourged by famine and typhus-fever in 

1817 347 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Kilmainham court-house meeting ; outrageous and unconstitutional proceedings of the 
sheriff — O'Connell's amusing controversy with Richard Lalor Shiel — O'Connell threatens 
to join the English radical reformers — William Conyngham Plunket's relief bills — O'Connell 
opposes them — Rude interruption of O'Connell at a Catholic meeting — Advances from the 
Orange corporation to the Catholics — Orange breach of faith —The visit of King George 
the Fourth to Ireland ; his enthusiastic reception by the people — The visit turns out a 
mockery and a delusion ; disappointment of Catholic hopes — The Irish avatar 381 

CHAPTER XVII. 

O'Connell communicates the plan of a new association to Shiel at a friend's house in Wicklow — 
The real Catholic Association founded— Lord Killeen — Union of all sections of Catholics — 
The priests become active workers in the cause — Slow progress of the new movement at 
first — O'Connell a delightful travelling companion — O'Connell establishes the " Catholic 
rent " — Difficulties he has to overcome ; his project sneered at ; his tremendous energy — 
His complete triumph ; friends and enemies surprised — The popular element strong in the 
Catholic movement for the first time — The Association a sort of national government 407 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
O'Connell and Shiel go to England as a deputation from the Catholic Association — Peel's crafty 

measure — Amusing incident at Wolverhampton, etc., etc 421 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Preparations for the Clare election — O'Connell offers himself to the electors as a candidate for 
Parliamentary honors — The Irish soldiery in favor of O'Connell — Emancipation brought 
forward in Parliament by Wellington and Peel — The Association is dissolved — Bigoted 
opposition to the relief measure — The king struggles against it — It passes both Houses — 
George the Fourth reluctantly signs the bill — Its provisions — Disfranchisement of the 
forty-shilling freeholders — O'Connell at the bar of the Commons ; he is meanly refused his 
seat — His enthusiastic reception in Ireland — Irish gratitude — Odd squabbles — O'Connell is 
re-elected for Clare — Reflections on the great Catholic victory 45 r 

PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 
Relations of Ireland to England the source of Irish misery — Independence necessary to Ireland's 
happiness — Aims of O'Connell's life — How far he succeeded — Where he failed, and why — 
Exaggeration of his theory of moral force — Ireland's capabilities — Rapid survey of Irish 
history down to the year 1775 491 

CONCLUSION. 

O'Cennell at Derrynane — Varieties — Parliamentary career — Last Repeal agitation — The famine — 

O'Connell's last illness and death — His character 542 



Portrait Gallery 



OF" THE 



4 ITJcist f Prominent f Characters -h 



IN THE STRUGGM FOR 



IRELAND'S NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, 



WITH- 



'2Biocjraphical -Sketches of fheir ,-Swes. 





MR. PARNELL AT THE AGE OF 6. 
(Born in Avondale June 27, 1846.) 



MR. PARNELL AT THE AGE OF 16. 

(From a portrait taken at the time he entered 

Cambridge University.) 




CHARLES STEWART PARNELL AS LEADER OF THE IRISH RACE. 
(TJied October 6, 1891. 1 

From photographs furnished through the courtesy of the family. 



Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin in 1679, and is described in the " Encyclopedia 
Britannica " as holding a high place in literature among Queen Anne's poets. In 1717 he 
produced a translation of the Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. He was an intimate friend 

of Dean Swift and of Pope, and to the last he 
defended the latter when the critics of the period 
launched invectives against him. In 1718, while 
on his way to a living in Ireland, he died ; and 
Doctor Johnson, writing about him, said : " His 
praise must be derived from the easy sweetness 
of his diction ; in his verses there is more hap- 
piness than pains ; he is sprightly without effort, 
and always delights, though he never ravishes ; 
everything is proper, yet everything seems 
casual." 

He was a man of considerable private fortune, 
and the head of the English family from which 
was descended Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. 




thomas parnell. Rear- Admiral of the United States Navy, 

(Poet ) 

Charles Stewart was born of Irish parents at 
Philadelphia on July 28, 1778. In 1791 he entered the merchant service as a cabin-boy, and 
before he was twenty he rose to the command of an Indiaman. In 1798 he entered the navy 
as lieutenant, and served on board the frigate United States against the French privateers. 
In the summer of 1813 he took command of the Constitution, and shortly afterward cap- 
tured the British war-vessel Picton — of fourteen guns — and several merchant vessels. In 
December, 1814, he set out on a second cruise, and on February 20, 1815, after an engage- 
ment of fifty minutes, he captured the two English war-ships Cyane and Levant. For these 
services he received from Congress a vote of 
thanks, a sword, and a gold medal ; from the 
Pennsylvania Legislature, a vote of thanks and 
a sword ; and from New York the freedom of 
the city of New York. He died at Borden- 
town, New Jersey, on November 7, 1869, hav- 
ing been in the service seventy-one years, and 
nineteen years senior officer of the United 
States Navy. His daughter, Delia Tudor, 
married John Henry Parnell, of Avondale, 
Ireland, in 1835, and from that marriage 
sprung Charles Stewart Parnell. 



COMMODORE STEWART. 




Mrs. Delia T. Parnell, the mother of the great Irish leader, is the. daughter of Ad- 
miral Stewart, who commanded the United States ship Constitution in the second war 
against Great Britain. During her married life, when with her husband she lived at Avon- 
dale, County Wicklow, her house became historically famous by reason of her extraor- 
dinary hospitality to the Irish political refugees of the 
"""P^H^.-v period. During the time of the Fenian movement — 

1865-67 — her house was always open to those who were 
hunted by the Government, and there can be no doubt 
but that her patriotism largely instilled into the young 
minds of her children those traits of hatred of oppres- 
sion and consuming national sentiment which have 
made their names famous in Ireland's history. 




Fanny, the second sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, 
was born at Avondale in 1848. Like him, her national 
sympathies were early aroused, and when far away, in 
a French convent, where she was placed to complete 
mrs. d. t. parnell ner education, she expressed her patriotism in many a 

sweet poem. When the Irish People newspaper was 

founded in Dublin, the editors were often amazed when this beautiful young girl handed 

them for publication the outpourings of 

her patriotic soul in exquisite verse. But 

they did not then know her; she signed 

her poems "Alerta," and her recompense 

was greater than money, for before a half 

dozen of them were published "Alerta" 

was universally acknowledged to be a poet 

of rare excellence — " one whose songs were 

the very soul-cry of the Irish race." 

With her sister Anna, she did much to or- 
ganize the Ladies' Land League ; her spirit 

enthused other ladies in the good work and 

when the leaders were in prison, her pen 

and advice were busy to keep alive the 

nationality of the movement of which her 

brother was leader. She died suddenly at 

the home of her mother at Bordentown, 

N. J., on July 29, 1882, and is buried in 

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, near Boston, Mass. 

FANNY PARNELL. 





HENRY GRATTAN. 




LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. 

Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of 
the most picturesque figures in the history 
of the '98 movement. He was arrested in 
the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, at 153 
Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 20, 1798, and 
during the resistance which he made to the 
soldiery, was shot in the shoulder, from 
which wound he died on the morning of 
June 3d. 



There are few greater characters in 
Irish history than Henry Grattan. The 
Irish Parliament of 1782 has ever since 
that time been called " Grattan's Parlia- 
ment," and justly so, for it was he to 
whom the people of Ireland were in- 
debted for the quasi liberty of that 
Parliament. From the very first, all 
through the proceedings of the volun- 
teers and until the final session of that 
National Irish Parliament, he was the 
soul and spirit of it ; against every odds 
he fought for Irish nationality, and his 
speech at the closing session — when, 
through the treachery of England's 
ministers, the Act of the Union was 
perpetrated — will always live as one of 
the most patriotic and oratorical efforts 
of statesmanship. His peroration in 
this memorable speech is regarded by 
foes as well as friends as being the most 
remarkable periods of oratory ever deliv- 
ered. It is given at length in this work. 




ROBERT EMMET. 

Perhaps in the entire list of Irish patriots 
not one holds the affections of the Irish 
people as does the memory of Robert 
Emmet. There is a romance about his life 
which has been put into exquisite verse by 
our national poet: "She is far from the 
Land." But it was his fearlessness and de- 
termined patriotism which have endeared 
him to his countrvmen. 




Theobald Wolfe Tone is one of the most pic- 
turesquely patriotic characters in Irish history. He 
was born in Dublin in 1763, and at a very early 
age became very intimately connected with the 
Young Irish revolutionaries of the period. As he 
grew into manhood his patriotism increased in 
determination and vigor, and in 1795 he wrote the 
original declaration of the United Irishmen So- 
ciety. One year afterward he went to Paris, 
where he was received by the President of the 
Cabinet, M. Fleury. To him Tone told the story 
of his mission, and, after a few weeks of secret 
conferences, the French Republic decided to send 
an expedition to Ireland under the command of 
General Hoche, the hero of Dunkirk. Wolfe Tone 
was attached to this expedition, by the courtesy 
of the French Government, as chef de brigade. 
This expedition, which was afterward called the 
" Expedition of Bantry Bay," proved a dismal 
failure; the Irish "Directory" was unready, and, 
while waiting for signals from the shore, the 
French fleet was dispersed by a terrific storm. 




THOMAS DAVIS. 



GERALD GRIFFIN. 



Thomas Davis was born at Mallow, in the 
County of Cork, in 1814. He was the em- 
bodiment of a patriot, and his poems are so 
filled with truisms of liberty that it is im- 
possible to read them without being con- 
vinced that this young Irelander would have 
done more for his country by his brain and 
pen, than could hosts of disorganized con- 
spirators. 



Gerald Griffin was born in the County 
of Limerick, on Dec. 10, 1803. As a poet he 
has few peers in the repertoire of Irish 
poetry, and his novels, " The Collegians," 
etc., have a place in every library of note in 
the world. In 1838 he joined the Christian 
Brotherhood at the North Monastery, Cork, 
and he died there on June 12, 1840. A 
simple slab marks his resting-place. 
5 




justin McCarthy. 



Justin McCarthy was born in the city of Cork in 
1831. When he was quite young he accepted a posi- 
tion as reporter on the Cork Examiner ; but McCarthy 
was not born to remain a reporter upon a provincial 
journal. In 1848 he was an ardent member of the 
movement of Smith O'Brien ; and there is no doubt 
but that this association moulded the national aspira- 
tions for which he is so conspicuous. But it is as a 
writer and historian rather than as an Irish leader 
that Mr. McCarthy's genius is more particularly dis- 
cernible. His literary efforts are a bright page in the 
record of Ireland's literati ; his " History of Our Own 
Times," "A Fair Saxon," and many other works of his 
have a world - renowned reputation, and class him 
among those great writers upon whose brows the na- 



tions have woven the laurel wreath. 




WILLIAM O BRIEN. 

William O'Brien was born in Mallow, in 
the County of Cork, and at an early age 
became a reporter on the Cork Examiner. 
But his lot was not destined to be only 
a reporter. His after-life and patriotic 
services will be found in detail in this vol- 
ume. 




JOHN DILLON 

John Dillon is the son of the Dr. Dillon 
of 1848 fame. The patriotism of his father 
has descended to him with added intensity, 
and if we except Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, 
and Mr. O'Brien, no man has so well earned 
the love and esteem of his fellow-country- 
men. 

6 



Charles J. Kickham was born in Mullina- 
hone, County Tipperary, in 1830. At an 
early age he wrote for many periodicals. 
Some of his poems contain peculiarly delight- 
ful passages and patriotic sentiments ; but 
he is best known because of his unflinching 
hatred of English domination in Ireland. 
His two novels, " Knocknossard " and "The 
Untenanted Graves," are some of the best 
additions to Irish fiction. In 1866 he was 
arrested for his connection with the Fenian 
organization, and sentenced to fourteen 
years' penal servitude, but was released 
four years afterward. His poem " Patrick 




CHARLES J KICKHAM 

Sheehan " was written in prison, while his 
eyes were becoming very weak. It was ad- 
dressed concerning himself, as the follow- 
ing defiant passage will indicate : 

" Oh blessed Virgin Mary, 

Mine is a mournful tale: 
A poor blind prisoner here I am 

In Dublin's dreary jail ; 
Struck blind within the trenches 

Where I never feared a foe ; 
And now I'll never see again 

My own sweet Aherlow. 



Michael Davitt was born at Straid, in 
the County of Mayo, in 1846. When he was 
four years old his father was evicted, and 
the young Michael saw his home demolished 
by the " crowbar brigade." As his life is 
treated at length in this work, I shall here 
only quote from a letter of his to the late 
Archbishop MacHale, a passage of which 




MICHAEL DAVITT. 

tells much of his early life : " Some twenty- 
five years ago my father was ejected from a 
small holding near the parish of Straid, in 
Mayo, because unable to pay a rent which 
the crippled state of his resources, after 
struggling through the famine years, ren- 
dered impossible. Trials and sufferings in 
exile for a quarter of a century, physically 
disabled me for life." 




EDMUND DWYER GRAY. 

E. D. Gray was the son of Sir John Gray. 
He inherited his father's patriotism, and 
when he took charge of the Freeman's Jour- 
nal he made that paper purely national. 
His work in Parliament and his editorials 
on " The National Press " — chiefly his own 
— had much to say to the education of the 
Irish people concerninp self-government. 




A M. SULLIVAN 

Patrick Egan, the present U. S. Min- 
ister to Chili, was born in Dublin, and 
was extensively engaged in the milling 
business in that city until 1882, when he 
was forced to leave the country because 
of his connection with the Land League, 
as treasurer of that organization. When 
the Forster Act was put into operation, 
he and Mr. Thomas Brennan fled to 
Paris, taking with them the funds of the 
League, and this bold move saved their 
confiscation by the British Government. 
Mr. Egan ranks high in the estimation of 
his fellow-countrymen as a man of un- 
flinching patriotism and honor. 

During the progress of the Parnell- 
Times Commission Mr. Egan's name was 
frequently used by the Attorney-General 
for England as being that of a man con- 
nected with outrages and subsidizing 
criminals; but, long before the miserable 
Pigott made his confession, Mr. Egan 
had vindicated himself. His flight to 
Paris and his communications with those 
who afterward bec&me criminals or trai- 
tors, were all justified out of the mouths 
of his accusers themselves. 



ALrxANDER M. Sullivan was born in 
Bantry in 1833. His family dates back 
its origin, in this district, to a very an- 
cient period. His own father, and he 
himself, were house-painters, and many 
a man to-day living in Bantry points 
with pride to the handiwork of this illus- 
trious family. But Mr. Sullivan was pos- 
sessed of a genius beyond house-paint- 
ing. At a very early age some of his 
writings were published in the Dublin 
Nation j they attracted considerable at- 
tention, and a few years afterward he 
became editor of that journal. From 
that time forward, as a barrister, mem- 
ber of Parliament, and editor, he made 
a distinct feature in Ireland's struggle 
for self-government ; but his greatest 
successes were obtained in connection 
with his popular history of Ireland, enti- 
tled " The Story of Ireland." At the 
bar he was unexcelled as an advocate ; 
his utterances in Parliament are quoted 
from day to day by Irish public speak- 
ers ; but, as with all great figures in 
Irish affairs, death too soon robbed Ire- 
land of a fearless and bright son.. 




PATRICK EGAN. 




T. D. SULLIVAN. 



Mr. Sullivan is one of that famous 
family who have done so much for Ireland 
in recent years. With his brother, A. M. 
Sullivan, he carried Ireland's banner 
through many a bitter struggle in the 
A T ation; but he is best known to the Irish 
race through his national ballads. One of 
them, " God save Ireland," has been se- 
lected as the Irish national anthem. An- 
other, and of much greater poetic and 
literary merit, is "Deep in Canadian 
Woods." This song was written many 
years ago and set to an old Irish melody, 
and many a time, during the Civil War of 
the United States, an Irish regiment was 
heard singing in unison this patriotic bal- 
lad as they rushed into the conflict. Mr.. 
Sullivan's claim to Irishmen as a national 
and patriotic poet will live long after he 
has rested with his Chief, in Glasnevin 
Cemetery. 



Thomas Brennan was Secretary of the 
Irish Land League at the time when it was 
suppressed by the British Government. 
He it was who, at the time when Patrick 
Egan fled to Paris with the funds, took 
with him the records of the League, and 
thus defeated the designs of England. It 
was a bold undertaking ; but Mr. Brennan 
knew no fear when his country was to be 
served. In Paris he was subjected to the 
most rigid espionage by the detectives of 
the Government of England. Their design 
was to secure the papers of the League at 
any cost (honor included) ; but in Brennan 
they found a perfect enemy — he outwitted 
them at every step, and the secrets of his 
organization were secure. He is now a 
wealthy real estate agent in Lincoln, Ne- 
braska. 





Perhaps in the whole phalanx of Irishmen who repre- 
sented Ireland in the British Parliament, not one de- 
serves so much honor as Mr. T. P. O'Connor. A journalist 
of enviable reputation, a man who could have made a 
large fortune from his pen, he, in the very beginning 
of his journalistic successes, gave his time and energies 
to the cause of his country. 

Because of the field in which his literary efforts were 
strewn he understood and was in touch with the masses 
in England, and among them his work has been more 
effective in educating the English people as to the needs 
and position of the people of Ireland, than has been 
accomplished by any other man. His " Life of Dis- 
raeli " and his " Parnell Movement " are works which 
will live long after Mr. O'Connor is "gathered to his 
fathers." 



T. P. O'CONNOR. 



Mr. Timothy Harrington was born at Castletown- 
Berehaven, in the County of Cork, shortly after the 
famine of 1845-48. In his early days he had ample 
opportunity to observe the results of the iniquitous 
laws under which his countrymen groaned. After a time 
he moved to Tralee, County Kerry, and shortly afterward 
became the editor of the Kerry Sentinel. His intensely 
patriotic articles attracted the attention of the lead- 
ers of the Land Movement, and Mr. Harrington was in- 
vited to become Secretary of the League. He is per- 
haps the best organizer of a people on either hemi- 
sphere. Not only has he done the work, both inside and 
outside Parliament, but he did much of the thinking 
which led the people of Ireland to the position where 
Mr. Parnell's statesmanship brought them. 





TIMOTHY HARRINGTON 



Timothy Michael 
Healy was born in 

Bantry, County Cork, in 1855. He was educated at the 
Christian Brothers' school in Fermoy, but at thirteen he 
was obliged to set about the task of earning a livelihood. 
A few years afterward he became a parliamentary writer 
for the Dublin Nation. Recognizing his genius, Mr. 
Parnell soon brought him to the front ; he caused him 
to be elected a member of Parliament, appointed him 
his own secretary, and in many other ways paved the 
way for Mr. Healy's road to political distinction. As a 
result of his own genius and this training, no. more 
brilliant or satirical man ever represented an Irish con- 
stituency. 



TIMOTHY M HEALY. 





It is impossible, in a short notice, to say 
much of Mr. Gladstone or to criticise his 
acts. No greater Englishman ever lived. 
As I have alluded to him and to his acts 
concerning Ireland, at length, in my life of 
Parnell, I only desire that the readers of 
this short sketch shall study his character 
as I have portrayed it. It is undoubtedly 
the grandest character of this century. 



ARTHUR BALFOUR. 
(Ex-Chief Secretary for Ire'and.) 

Mr. Balfour is a nephew of Lord Salis- 
bury, the present Premier of England. But 
it is as Chief Secretary for Ireland that he is 
best known. The Coercion Acts which he 
introduced into the House of Commons, 
and which became law, will live forever as 
the most drastic measures ever forced on by 
a government. But he had the manliness 
to admit his error. 



Joseph Chamberlain was born near Birmingham in 
1836. He was educated at University College, Lon- 
don, and after leaving college he went into the screw- 
making business of his father. After a time he retired 
from this business with a very large fortune and en- 
tered politics. In 1876 he was elected member of 
Parliament for Birmingham, and in 1880 he was 
selected by Mr. Gladstone for the Cabinet position of 
President of the Board of Trade, and possesses a great 
deal of that quality which impresses the masses ; his 
oratory, though of a somewhat inferior order, is, never- 
theless, effective ; but his overweening ambition and 
self-esteem have landed him in an inextricable polit- 
ical quagmire. With all his capabilities, he could 
never be a leader, and this ambition was the rook 
upon which he became shipwrecked. 





WILLIAM FORSTER. 
{Ex-Chief Secretary for Ireland ) 

Joseth Gillies Biggar was born in 
the County Louth, and succeeded his 
father as owner of one of the largest 
provision stores in Ireland. At a very- 
early age he became an ardent Irishman. 
His ideas were all given to the oppressed 
of his race. To him are we indebted for 
Mr. Parnell's grasp of parliamentary 
proceedings. He had only one love — Ire- 
land; and no patriot evergave so much 
of his life to his country as did Biggar. 

He was a simple man; he had no am- 
bition save to benefit oppressed Ireland, 
and his colleagues speak of this trait in 
his character as the one which made him 
so beloved of them. His was a strange 
and a curious character, filled only with 
a desire to benefit his country. 



Mr. Wm. Forster was Chief 
Secretary for Ireland during 
the Gladstone administration 
of 1 880-1 884. He became fa- 
mous at first because of his Co- 
ercion Act, under which over 
2,000 Irishmen were imprisoned 
without trial. It was while 
Mr. Forster was Chief Secre- 
tary that the famous Kilmain- 
ham Treaty was made between 
Mr. Parnell and the British 
Government — one of the stipu- 
lations of which was that Mr. 
Forster should resign his posi- 
tion as Chief Secretary. After- 
ward — before his death — he 
was one of Ireland's best cham- 
pions. 

He was like Thomas — he 
needed to see and to feel to 
believe or understand. 




JOSEPH G. BIGGAR. 





SIR CHARLES RUSSELL. 

Sir Charles Russell was born at Newry 
in 1833. His parents having moved to Eng- 
land when he was quite young, he became 
an adopted son of England ; but, even in 
his early days, his sympathies were with the 
land of his birth ; and when he was called 
to the bar he indicated this sympathy un- 
erringly. He has been Attorney-General 
of England, and was knighted for his great 
legal acumen and integrity. 



No Englishman ever showed such feeling 
for oppressed Ireland as did Henry Labou- 
chere. His writings in his own paper, 
Truth, had much to say to the gains of the 
Irish national party in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment ; and his action concerning the forger- 
ies of Pigott in the famous Parnell-7>'w« 
case should never be forgotten by Irishmen. 



Thomas Sexton was born in Waterford in 
1848. When he was only thirteen years old 
he entered into competition for a clerkship in 
the Waterford and Wexford Railway Com- 
pany, and, against thirty competitors, secured 
the position. In 1869 he moved to Dublin, and 
at once secured a position as leader-writer on 
the Dublin Nation. Finally, he was elected a 
member of Parliament, and he was undeniably 
one of the greatest acquisitions which the Irish 
party ever received. As an orator he has few 
peers ; none excel him in the British House of 
Commons. When Sexton rises in his place 
the benches are at once crowded, and the pro- 
verbial pin can be heard to fall as he delivers 
his speech. He has been Lord Mayor of Dub- 
lin, and few men have so well earned the re- 
gard and homage of the people of Ireland. 




THOMAS SEXTON. 



13 




RICHARD PIGOTT. 




Le Caron (Beach), the prime spy and 
informer of the past decade, is a figure too 
mean to dwell upon. He wormed himself 
into the confidences of the Irish in America, 
found out every criminality, and the Eng- 
lish Government greedily paid for the in- 
formation. His evidence on the Parnell- 
Times Commission is one of the most daring 
perjuries of the century. 



Richard Pigott was born in the 
city of Dublin. Of this man it is 
not my purpose to say much. He 
deserves more of pity than obloquy. 
An Irishman himself, when he was 
only sixteen years old he became a 
contributor to some of Ireland's most 
patriotic periodicals. Afterward he 
became an editor and owner of one 
of these sheets. But there was that 
in him which even patriotism could 
not quench. The fire that burned 
in his soul was fed by treachery ; 
and in those dark days of his life, 
before the climax of the Parnell- 
Times forgery case, he suffered as 
did few men. He was false to every- 
thing he was ever engaged in, and 
he was even false to himself, when 
in the Hotel des Ambassadores, in 
Madrid, he ended his miserable life 
with a bullet. 




CAPTAIN O'SHEA. 

It is unnecessary to say more of Captain 
O'Shea than that he figured so notoriously 
in connection with the later life of Mr. Par- 
nell. He figures as one of the most notori- 
ously odious characters in Irish history. It 
is impossible in such a work as this to 
say more of him — save where his name 
is necessarily mentioned in Mr. Parnell's 
life. 

14 









LORD DUFFERIN. 

Lord Dufferin was born in Florence in 
1826, while his parents were sojourning there. 
He succeeded his father as fifth Baron Duf- 
ferin and Clandeboye. No peer of England — 
of the Irish peerage — ever showed such love 
for Ireland as did he. In 1872 he was ap- 
pointed Governor-General of Canada, and 



LADY DUFFERIN. 

In 1862 Lord Dufferin married the beau- 
tiful and accomplished Harriet Georgina 
Hamilton. Lady Dufferin had even in her 
girlhood become celebrated as a writer ; 
and though she is English of the English, her 
sympathies have ever been with oppressed 
Ireland. The marquis is truly fortunate in 



when he was leaving it he made a memora- having so gifted a wife. And I have no doubt 
ble speech, in which he said : " It is a very but that the writings of his mother, which 
peculiar thing that England has never been appeal to everybody, had much influence in 



able to govern her colonies 
without Ireland's assist- 
ance ; nine-tenths of her 
governor -generals are 
Irish ; it seems to me that 
this should be a proof that 
Ireland is able to govern 
herself, and it is even more 
strange that to this great 
colony the Queen has ap- 
pointed to succeed me an- 
other Celt — the Marquis of 
Lome — -who, though not 
Irish, is of the same race 
from which we have all 
sprung. This fact lessens 
my sorrow at parting from 
you." Probably this pride 
of race was induced by his 
mother, the famous Lady 
Dufferin, whose poems con- 
tain such exquisite pathos 
and true Irish sentiment. 
Her " Lament of the Irish 
Emigrant " is one of the 
most beautiful poems of 
our race. 



shaping her love for Ire- 
land. 




LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH. 
(Assassinated May 6, 1882.) 



Lord Frederick Caven- 
dish was appointed Chief 
Secretary to the Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, in 
May, 1882. He was friend- 
ly to the cause of Ireland, 
and a wave of gladness 
swept over the country 
when his appointment was 
announced. But unlucki- 
ly, when he landed in Ire- 
land, he was met by Mr. 
Burke (the Under-Secre- 
tary), and as the Invinci- 
bles had decided to kill 
Mr. Burke, they — without 
knowing who he was — also 
assassinated him. All Ire- 
land mourned him — all the 
Irish race mourned the 
error. 

IS 




KILMAINHAM JAIL 



Kilmainham Jail is the most historic prison in Ireland. Here some of Ireland's 
greatest patriots have been incarcerated, and here the suspects of Mr. Forster's Act 
were first imprisoned. It has more political bearing on Ireland's destinies than has any 
other prison. 






ffp i , i 




PARNELL, DILLON, AND O'KEL 



KILMAINHAM PRISON 



This picture should be historical. It shows Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Kelly 
leaving Kilmainham prison after the Kilmainham Treaty. This Treaty is explained at 
length in this volume ; it needs to be read to understand the importance of its historical 
meaning. 

16 




Liberty crowning Parnell. 



r^fyarles ^teWart ]pari}ell. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 
S y / 



' Is there no call, no consecrating cause, 
Approv'd by heav'n, ordained by nature's laws, 
Where justice flies the herald of our way, 
And truth's pure beams upon the banners play ? 
Yes ! there's a call sweet as an angel's breath, 
To slumb'ring babes, or innocence in death ; 
And urgent as the tongue of heav'n within, 
When the mind's balance trembles upon sin. 
Oh ! 'tis our country's voice, whose claim should meet 
An echo in the soul's most deep retreat ; 
Along the heart's responding chords should run, 
JSTor let a tone there vibrate — but the one ! " 

— Thomas Moore. 



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AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



In the writing of this work, my sole endeavor has been to give a 
truthful narrative of the life and patriotic services of Ireland's last great leader, 
without prejudice or without entering into the personal and controversial mat- 
ters which have occupied the attention of the Irish race during the past ten 
months. In order to accomplish this purpose, I have quoted more often from 
the sayings of Mr. Parnell's enemies rather than from friendly writings. Dur- 
ing the progress of this book I have struggled with extreme difficulties ; there 
were two elements which I wished to avoid ; because, in gathering material 
for the latter part of this work, I had to select, from an impartial standpoint, 
the expressions of both hatred and love, which have occupied public attention 
since his death. Nevertheless, I believe that I have been impartial, and that I 
have done, as well as is in my power, justice to the memory of him who, upon 
his death-bed, said : " Give my love to my colleagues and to the Irish people." 

In the sketch of Ireland from 1848 to 1875, I have introduced some facts 
which have never before been published. They concern that period when, for 
the first time in this century, Irishmen took the field in open conflict for her 
regeneration. Mr. Luby's Life of O'Connell, and Outline of Irish History, 
which I have edited for this volume, need no comment from me. Mr. Luby's 
reputation is sufficient guarantee of the excellence of his work. 

Rob. F. Walsh. 

New York, January, 1892. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



CHAPTER I. 

Why Mr. Parnell was so important a Factor in Irish Politics— His Boyhood, Early 
Life, and Antecedents — The distinguished Lineage of the Irish Leader — A Com- 
parison between his Life and those of O'Connell, etc., etc. — How his Patriotic In- 
stinct was Aroused — Why Irishmen should honor Him. 



N all the long line of illustrious Irishmen, not one has done so much 
for his country as has Charles Stewart Parnell. He did not imitate 
the methods of Smith O'Brien, nor of Emmet, nor of John Mitchel 
and hosts of others, whose names will be cherished by all lovers of liberty : nor 
did he follow in the lines of either Grattan or Daniel O'Connell. 

He had a method of his own. And although, in this biography of the man 
—the greatest Irishman who ever saw the light in " that island of the west " — I 
shall deal chiefly with those events of his career which will explain more clearly 
his great efforts for Irish autonomy, I must be pardoned if I take the liberty 
also of comparing his life with those of other patriots ; sifting, as well as it is in 
my power, the motives which led him to do that which no other Irishman, 
before him, had the daring to attempt, and dwelling briefly upon the boyhood 
of the great character whose guidance and influence brought the Irish people so 
close to victory. 

He was a man of " one unchangeable and stern resolve ; calm, silent, and 
restrained ; passionless but passionate." That stern resolve was the regeneration 
of his country, and the " silent restraint " and " passionless passion " which I 
have quoted from the pen of an able English writer regarding him, were in truth, 
the characteristics needed by an Irish leader whose true aim was his country's 
welfare. 

In a word, when Mr. Parnell was elected leader of the Irish people he 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



undertook rather the position of General than of political figurehead which so 
many political leaders (?) have assumed. As has oftentimes been said of him, 
" He was with them, but not of them." He was their commanding officer. 
From the first he assumed that role ; and it was that role which eventuated in 
making the Irish parliamentary party and the Irish race a solid phalanx of Home 
Rulers and soldiers of the nation for nationality, under a general whom they 
could trust and against whose inviolable character as leader of the Irish race, 
even his worst enemies never dared to utter a question. 

It is by such men that nations are made. And right here I might very 
properly quote the words of a famous philosopher : " That which is, is." And, 
no matter what be the mechanism of the brains of those who gainsay it, there 
never lived an Irishman, up to his day, who, by his devotion to his country and 
his peculiar adaptability for the role, was better fitted to regain Irish Nationality, 
or who did so much, with the materials at his disposal, toward its restoration. 

It is not for me, in chronicling his life, to discuss the opinions of others ; but 
it would be strictly impossible, writing from an impartial standpoint and imbued 
with a perceptive mind, which I claim to myself, to treat the subject without, 
more or less, giving room for discussion. 

I have read many biographical sketches of Mr. Parnell — from the pens of 
men widely different in opinion and much superior to mine. I confess that I was 
not particularly well pleased with any. But, if I were asked which of them all I 
liked the best and considered the most truthful, I would answer : Those among 
them which were written by his enemies. For, the position of the man de- 
manded truth from even their pens, and it was sifted so finely that it bristled 
with the evidences of his greatness. 

For myself, I scarcely hope that I shall do so well. I was, and I am proud 
to say that I am still, his friend ; but I shall endeavor, as is my duty in this 
work, to be impartial ; and when. I have done, I do not think that I shall be 
severely challenged upon the score of my allegiance. 

But, before proceeding further, I beg to be excused if I make one brief allu- 
sion to the action of the Irish people since Mr. Parnell's death. They have — 
three-fourths of them — either forgotten or discounted his great services to Ireland, 
because of a personal venality ; and it is only here that I shall seem to be partial 
when I say that in this regard, in order that they may be re-enlightened as to 
his worth and the loss which they have sustained, the words of Henry Grattan — 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 3 



used upon a very dissimilar occasion — force themselves upon me and unwillingly 
cause me to quote them : 

" I hope some dreadful calamity will befall the country that will open the 
eyes of the King (people)." This was allegorical, and he continued: "What I 
have spoken, I have spoken conditionally ; but now I retract the condition. I 
speak absolutely, and I do hope that some signal calamity will befall the 
country." 

It will be the plan of England's ministers to prevent such a direct possi- 
bility. They do not wish the eyes of the Irish people to be opened to the best 
factors that can be used for their national benefit. The same wheedling that has 
now won over some of their leaders and caused them to desert the banner of 
their greatest leader will be used again and again, as was it ever, with exceeding 
cunning, and the prime issue will thereby be indefinitely delayed. 

But as we proceed, it may be necessary to notice these things more fully, 
• and I hold myself, therefore, excused that, having broached the subject, and hav- 
ing possibly awakened interest, I do not pursue it at this point. 

Charles Stewart Parnell was born on June 27, 1846, at Avondale, County 
Wicklow. The silly question which has been raised by some of his biographers 
upon this point I took the trouble to authoritatively set at rest. My authority 
is Mrs. Delia T. Parnell, his aged mother. 

The history of Mr. Parnell's family is of extreme interest to both the 
islanders of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as to the people of America. 
The Parnell family originally came from Congleton, in Cheshire, and from that 
town one branch, which has been raised to the English peerage, has taken its 
title. Among them was the famous poet, Thomas Parnell. 

Nearly two centuries ago John Parnell was member for Maryborough in 
the Irish Parliament. He was succeeded by his son John, who was afterward 
created a baronet. This Sir John was the last Chancellor of the Exchequer in 
the Irish Parliament, and both he and his son Henry, who was also a member 
of the Irish House of Commons at the time, stood firmly by Grattan and the 
other advocates of Irish nationality to the last. Sir John was Mr. Parnell's 
great-grandfather, and it is remarkable what a similarity of determined Irish 
nationalism existed in both characters. The great-grandfather was designated 
by Sir Jonah Barrington as '•incorruptible" in his fight against the Union, and 
he proved his title to the appellation by resigning his office of Chancellor, which 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



he had held for many years, and voting consistently against union with 
England. 

Sir Henry Parnell, who was elected to the United Parliament upon the 
death of his father, became a very distinguished member of the British cabinet. 
He was appointed Secretary for War in Lord Grey's ministry in 1832, and in 
1 841 he was raised to the peerage under the title Baron Congleton. It will 
therefore be seen that Charles Stewart Parnell had hereditary claims upon the 
esteem and gratitude of the Irish people. 

His father, John Henry Parnell, of Avondale, was the grandson of the 
historic Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and during his early days lived the 
retired life of an Irish squire at his beautiful home among the picturesque hills 
of Wicklow. But one day he decided to visit the United States, and the result 
following that visit has played an important part in the history of his country 
and of the British Empire. At Washington he met Miss Delia Stewart, a 
daughter of Commodore Charles Stewart — afterward Admiral Stewart — and in 
a short time married her. From that marriage sprung Charles Stewart Parnell, 
the subject of this sketch. 

Descended from such a distinguished Irish family on his father's side, it 
will not be uninteresting to tell something of Miss Stewart's family. Admiral 
Stewart played a very important part in the history of America. In 18 15 he, 
in his ship — the Constitution — captured the two British vessels — the Cyane and 
Levant. This victory had as important an import upon the history of that war 
as had Nelson's at the battle of Trafalgar. All America rung with his praises. 
Congress struck a special gold medal for him in honor of the event, and the 
thanks of many State Legislatures and the freedom of many cities were voted 
to him. 

He had passed the Biblical age of three score and ten when Fort Sumter 
was fired upon ; as a matter of fact, he was then in his eighty-third year. But 
the patriotism and fire that led him to those acts of daring in his country's 
cause which made him famous still animated him, and he at once applied to be 
put into active service. In his letter he said : " I am as young as ever to fight 
for my country." Of course his application was not granted ; but to the end 
he maintained that he would yet be able to again do service for his country. 

In Sherlock's "Life of Charles Stewart Parnell" he gives the following 
description of the admiral, which I have had verified: 



Hlfe BRILLIANT CAREER. 



" Commodore Stewart was about five feet nine inches high, and of a dig- 
nified and engaging presence. His complexion was fair, his hair chestnut ; 
eyes large, blue, penetrating, and intelligent. The cast of his countenance 
was Roman, bold, strong, and commanding, and his head finely formed. His 
control over his passions was truly surprising, and under the most irritating 
circumstances his oldest seamen never saw a ray of anger flash from his eye. 
His kindness, benevolence, and humanity were proverbial, but his sense of 
justice and the requisitions of duty were as unbending as fate. In the moment 
of greatest stress and danger he was as cool and quick in judgment as he was 
utterly ignorant of fear. His mind was acute and powerful, grasping the great- 
est, or smallest subjects with the intuitive mastery of genius." 

Such was the style of man from whom Mr. Parnell sprung on his mother's 
side. " Old Ironsides," as he was affectionately called by the American people 
— because of his ship Ironsides — was the first American admiral. But it is 
unnecessary here to go further into the distinguished lineage of Charles Stewart 
Parnell. His hereditary claim upon the people of Ireland has been abundantly' 
shown ; his claim as the grandson of Commodore Stewart upon the American 
people has often been recognized. 

When he was yet a child — at the age of six — he often astounded his par- 
ents and the tenantry of Avondale by some strangely pertinent remarks and 
suggestions. We reproduce a portrait of him taken at that time, from which 
the brightness of the future statesman will readily be seen. There is an inquir- 
ing, determined look upon the face of the child which, long years afterward, 
marked the life of the man. 

His mother, Mrs. Parnell, tells of him that on the rent-day, when the 
tenantry came to balance their accounts : " Young Charlie often grew angry 
with his father because he did not feast the farmers," nor would he brook 
chiding for it. His young soul yearned to please those peasants who, he had 
been taught, had been in former years subject to injustice ; he yearned to see 
them happier ; and, to his young mind, a great feast was the easiest way to 
attain that end. " I often scolded him for it," says his mother, " but, secretly, I 
was glad to see so fine a character developing in my boy." And the better to 
exemplify this trait in the child's character, she tells of how one day, when he 
was yet quite young, he saw a poor child on the road near Rathdrum. The 
little fellow was ragged and shoeless, and shivered in the cold. The moment 



CHARLES STEWART PAKNELL. 



he saw him, Charlie said : " Mother, let us stop the carriage and take the poor 
boy home ; .... he can have my new clothes, and you can buy me others." 

This was the budding of that great mind and heart which in after-years 
were given for the amelioration of the sufferings of his countrymen. He seemed 
to have an innate hatred of cruelty — to animals as well as men. 

It is not peculiar ; for Napoleon, Alfred, Constantine, and other great 
leaders of people were remarkable, in their childhood, for their humanity and 
hatred of cruelty. Nor is it unseemly to class Mr. Parnell with these historic- 
ally great men. To use Mr. Gladstone's words : "He is a man whose like the 
nations have seen little of in the present — a leader who leads." 

A. little farther on in his life yet another incident occurred which indicated 
the coming characteristics of Mr. Parnell. He was on a shooting expedition 
on the hills of Wicklow, with his brother John and another friend. They were 
grouse-shooting. They had with them two setters and a pointer. Parnell 
separated from the others, and took with him one of the dogs — a setter. 
Whilst he was absent the other setter was accidentally shot in the leg by his 
friend. After a little while he rejoined his brother and friend ; but he missed 
the dog, and he said : 

" Where is Leo ?" 

His elder brother, John, and their friend parried the question ; but Charles 
Parnell (he was then only fifteen) insisted the inquiry, and his brother said : 

" shot him in the leg." 

"Where is he?" asked Parnell. 

" Oh, somewhere at the back of the grove." 

Parnell did not wait to inquire further. He sought the wounded dog, 
bore him in his arms to a woodman's cottage, bandaged the leg, and then 
returned to the shooting-party. 

"Where have you been ?" asked his brother. 

" Oh, I have simply seen to poor Leo's leg." 

And in after-life this same characteristic — this love for the unfortunate and 
needy — was more fully developed in his extraordinary devotion and solicitude 
for the poor of Ireland. 

About this time also his will-power began to assert itself. He was a pecul- 
iarly thoughtful young gentleman, as our portrait of him at this age (seventeen) 
indicates ; but behind that inquiring disposition was a stubborn rectitude of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



purpose that fairly astounded his friends. When he was in the right, no mat- 
ter what was the inconvenience of asserting his position, he always insisted 
upon holding his path. 

Here is a striking example of this trait in his character, taken from the 
Pall Mall Budget : 

" An anecdote which has been told of Mr. Parnell in his cricketing days 
well illustrates some other sides of the man, in showing his readiness to take 
an advantage, and the native stubbornness and self-will of his character. ' Be- 
fore Mr. Parnell entered politics he was pretty well known,' writes 'An Ulster 
Loyalist ' some years ago, ' in the province of Leinster in the commendable 
character of a cricketer. He was captain of the Wicklow eleven, and in those 
days a very ardent cricketer. We considered him ill-tempered and a little hard 
in his conduct of that pastime. For example, when the next bat was not up to 
time, Mr. Parnell, as captain of the fielders, used to claim a wicket. Of course 
he was within his right in doing so ; but his doing it was anything but relished 
in a country where the game is never played on the assumption that this rule 
will be enforced. In order to win a victory, he did not hesitate to take advan- 
tage of the strict letter of the law. On one occasion a match was arranged 
between the Wicklow team and an eleven of the Phoenix Club, to be played 
on the ground of the latter in the Phoenix Park. Mr. Parnell's men, with 
great trouble and inconvenience, many of them having to take long drives in 
the early morning, assembled on the ground. A dispute occurred between Mr. 
Parnell and the captain of the Phoenix team. The Wicklow men wished their 
own captain to give in and let the match proceed. Mr. Parnell was stubborn, 
and rather than give up his point, marched his growling eleven back.'" 

It was the same assertion of the right that made him the typical leader of 
a people. And here I shall, in this connection, quote Mr. T. P. O'Connor. 
He says : 

" In the early days of Mr. Parnell the rights of tenants were but imper- 
fectly acknowledged or understood ; and during the recent contest in Carlow a 
letter was unearthed, of ancient date, which described an eviction scene by Mr. 
Parnell's brother, at which Mr. Parnell himself seems to have assisted. It is 
quite certain that if he had made up his mind that an eviction was the assertion 
of his just rights, he would not have hesitated to have taken part in it ; and that 
the threats of danger would only have impelled him more obstinately to carry 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



it out. One can well imagine the slim young man, with the scornful, proud 
face and red-brown eyes, and the slight figure, going among the desperate 
peasants with his loaded revolver in his pocket, ready and almost eager for a 
life-and-death encounter. It was a curious circumstance that the man who was 
to do more than any other person to transform the whole land system of Ire- 
land, to break down the power of the landlords, and to practically extinguish 
evictions, should have started his career as the second in command of an evic- 
tion party." 

Herein is a tribute to the man unequalled. He, even at that time, believed 
and acted upon the divine precept : " I shall sustain the right." 

As Mr. O'Connor says, it was indeed curious to see a man whose life was 
an absolutely startling reproof to cruelty, himself assisting at an eviction. But 
it was indicative of that strange, strong character which cast everything aside 
that right should be upheld. No man can read the story of Mr. Parnell's life 
without being convinced of his extraordinary consistency, often under the most 
galling conditions, in advancing along the line of justice. 

When he was six years old he was sent to a school at Yeovil, in Somerset- 
shire. Later he was placed in charge of a Rev. Mr. Barton at Kirk-Langley, 
Derbyshire ; afterward under the Rev. Mr. Wishaw, in Oxfordshire ; and finally 
he went to Cambridge University — the alma mater of his father. He was 
certainly not a very studious boy ; he cared more for games — particularly 
cricket — than his studies ; but withal he was a great reader. On one occasion 
he told a Mr. O'Reilly that, apart from his school-books, the first book he ever 
read was " Dr. Kane's Arctic Voyage,"°and that it left a deep impression upon 
his mind. It is only a few years since he told Mr. O'Reilly this, and it is 
remarkable how he connected the trials and hardships of the North Pole 
explorers with the fierce struggle for Irish autonomy in which he was then 
engaged. He said that " if men could suffer so bravely in the search of science, 
how much should we not expect from men engaged in searching for liberty." 

Perhaps one of the strangest things in Mr. Parnell's life was the fact that 
the country where he spent most of his early years (England) was the country 
against which his indomitable will and power were used for the greater part of 
his life. And it is not less strange that when he first sought to enter Parliament, 
the Irish leaders and people were extremely prejudiced against him because of 
his strong English accent. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



There have been several guesses as to how this young Irish gentleman first 
received the impressions of Nationality. Mr. O'Connor says that " To one 
Irishman, then a youth, living in the. country house of his fathers, and deeply 
immersed in the small concerns of a squire's daily life, the execution of the 
Manchester martyrs was a new birth of political convictions. To him, brooding 
from his early days over the history of his country, this catastrophe came to crys- 
tallize impressions into conviction and to pave the way for dreams of action. It 
was the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien that gave Mr. Parnell to the 
service of Ireland." 

Mr. O'Connor is not quite accurate in this assertion. The first impressions 
of Irish wrong and probably the true foundation of Mr. Parnell's patriotism 
occurred in this way. Curiously enough the incident which set his young brain 
thinking of his country's wrongs, happened while he was at Cambridge. A 
posse of policemen, believing that, some suspected persons were in hiding at 
Avondale, searched the house for them and for concealed arms. Neither the 
suspects nor arms were found ; but during the search Mrs. Parnell's bedroom 
was invaded. When young Charles heard of this outrage his mind became in- 
flamed against the government of Ireland, and he vowed that if he had been at 
Avondale at the time he would have shot the policeman without regard to con- 
sequences. Undoubtedly the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien whetted 
his developing patriotism ; and from that time until his first public appearance in 
political life, he was a keen student and observer of Irish affairs. 

Of course Mr. Parnell's nationalism was, to a certain extent, hereditary. 
The patriotic records of his grandfathers, Sir John Parnell and Commodore 
Stewart, must have naturally sown the seeds from which grew that extraordinary 
love of liberty and fearless justice which marked his political career. 




CHAPTER II. 

Mr. Parnell's first public Speech— He is Defeated for Dublin County— His Election 
for Meath— Isaac Butt — Mr. Parnell in America— Joseph G. Biggar and Charles 
Stewart Parnell conceive the Policy of Obstruction — Mr. Parnell as a Turner — 
Mr. Lecky's Comparison of Irish Pauperism— Comparison of the Lives of Grattan, 
O'Connell, and Parnell. 

IHEN the dissolution of February, 1874, came, Mr. Parnell wished to 
stand for Wicklow ; but he was then high sheriff of the county, and 
the Government would not allow him to qualify himself by resigning. 
Shortly after, Colonel Taylor's acceptance of office as Chancellor of the Duchy 
in the new Disraeli Administration made a vacancy for the County Dublin, and 
it was deemed advisable to fight the seat. The contest was regarded as a forlorn 
hope, and was known at the same time to be necessarily an expensive one. The 
offer of Mr. Parnell to fight the seat at his own expense came at a time when 
there was scarcely a penny in the exchequer of the National party, and the mere 
fact alone of his willingness to bear the burden in such a contest was enough to 
secure him a hearing ; but there were many doubts and fears, and the first im- 
pression was that, if a young landlord, hitherto entirely unknown in national 
struggle — for the outer and, still more, the inner history of this shy, reserved 
young man, buried in his Wicklow estate, was a closed book to everybody in the 
world — if such a man wished to represent a constituency, it was from no higher 
motive than social ambition ; and men who had become Members of Parliament 
for such reasons, have left a long record of half-hearted adherence, ending in 
violent hostility to the national cause. At last it was agreed that the young 
aspirant should at least get the privilege of a hearing, and he had a personal 
interview with the Council of the Home Rule League. John Martin and Mr. 
A. M. Sullivan were favorably impressed ; the latter undertook to propose his 
adoption at a meeting in the Rotunda, and here is his account of what followed 
and Mr. Parnell's debut in public life: "The resolution which I had moved in 
his favor having been adopted with acclamation, he came forward to address the 
assemblage. To our dismay he broke down utterly. He faltered, he paused, went 

(10) 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. n 



on, got confused, and, pale with intense but subdued nervous anxiety, caused 
every one to feel deep sympathy for him. The audience saw it all, and cheered 
him kindly and heartily ; but many on the platform shook their heads, sagely 
prophesying that if ever he got to Westminster, no matter how long he stayed 
there, he would either be a ' Silent Member,' or be known as ' Single-speech 
Parnell.' " 

A curious incident in this speech was when he attempted to quote Moore's 
couplet, " First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea." He began it in this 
way : " First je-je-jewel of the earth. First — I beg your pardon — First flower 
of the earth. First je-je-gem of the sea." At that time he had a peculiar stam- 
mering and hesitancy in his speech ; but as time wore on he seemed to lose the 
impediment entirely and no criticism of him as a speaker could be in stronger 
contrast to the quotation from A. M. Sullivan's work than the following: 

" No man, as far as I can judge, is more successful than the hon. member 
in doing that which it is commonly supposed that all speakers do, but which in 
my opinion few really do — and I do not include myself among those few — 
namely, in saying what he means to say " — (Mr. Gladstone, Hansard, vol. 
cclxxvii., p. 482). 

Nobody was surprised, when, upon the result of the County Dublin election 
being declared, it was found that Colonel Taylor was elected by an overwhelm- 
ing majority. But that first battle-field, and the defeat there, was just what 
seemed to be necessary to spur on Mr. Parnell to renewed conflict in the cause 
of Ireland. 

His next appearance in public was in the press in 1875. Early in that year 
a vacancy occurred in the representation of Tipperary ; John Mitchel was invited 
from America to contest the seat, and Mr. Parnell wrote then to the newspapers 
expressing his approbation of Mitchel's course and subscribed ^25 ($125.00) to 
the election fund. Mitchel was elected, but he died almost immediately, and, 
within a week, was followed to the grave by John Martin, his brother-in-law and 
fellow rebel and member for the County Meath. 

This time Mr. Parnell was invited to stand for Meath, and on April 19, 
1875, he was elected for that county. Three days afterward he entered Parlia- 
ment, and probably the events of that evening had much to say to the active 
policy which was afterward adopted by the Irish party. 

Joseph Gillis Biggar was delivering one of his famous four-hour speeches 



12 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

against coercion at the moment when Mr. Parnell entered to take his seat. The 
new member sat beside the member for Cavan, and before the night had 
passed he and Mr. Biggar had become friendly, and he volunteered the opinion 
that the doctrine of obstruction was "a capital idea." Biggar was not at all 
enamored of young Parnell ; but after a little time he consented to coach him 
in parliamentary matters, and he discovered in him "the making of a raon." 

Isaac Butt was at this time the leader of the Home Rule party, as it was 
then known. He was a most sincere and able man ; but he was scarcely the 
man fitted for the trying position of leader of an independent Irish party in the 
British House of Commons. In his earlier years he had been the champion of 
Protestant ascendency in the Dublin Council ; he was a vigorous opponent of 
O'Connell in the struggle for Repeal of the Union, but as time wore on he 
changed his opinions considerably. 

Probably his being selected as lawyer for the defense of the Fenian pris- 
oners had much to say to this change in his opinions ; for almost immedi- 
ately after the trials he became an earnest advocate of Irish self-govern- 
ment. He was a man of powerful intellect, and as an orator and debater had 
few peers ; but it is doubtful that he possessed those qualities which are needed 
in a leader of men. However, it is quite certain that the movement which was 
inaugurated and continued by Isaac Butt is responsible for the continuance 
and development of that spirit of nationality among the people of Ireland which 
was begun to be developed in the abortive attempts at revolution which I have 
described elsewhere. 

Speaking of him in the London Times, in June, 1879, Justin McCarthy 
says : 

" It might have been possible to find a man of far inferior gifts as a de- 
bater who could have led the party better. It was surely a mistake in the prac- 
tical art of leadership when Mr. Butt publicly denounced in the face of the 
House of Commons the action of certain of the more extreme among his fol- 
lowers. A leader has, in truth, to put up with a good deal of independent, or 
even eccentric, action on the part of some of his followers now and then, and 
so long as they are loyal to him on the one question which is the cause and the 
purpose of the party, he does wisely by letting them have a good deal of their 
own way." 

But as I shall afterward have to notice more particularly the actions of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 13 



this famous Irishman, I shall now return to the early parliamentary career of 
Mr. Parnell and tell something of Joseph Gillis Biggar, who, as I have already 
said, coached Mr. Parnell in the arts of parliamentary obstruction. 

A curious coincidence is this. It was on the evening of April 22, 1875, 
that Charles Stewart Parnell took his seat in the British House of Commons, 
and it was on this same night that Mr. Biggar took the initial step in that 
"active policy," or policy of "obstruction," which he and Mr. Parnell afterward 
used to such enormous advantage for the cause of Ireland. Mr. Butt asked 
him to speak " against time" upon the coercion bill which the Government was 
then engaged in passing. " How long would you wish me to speak?" asked 
the member for Cavan. " Oh, a pretty good While," replied his leader, and 
thereupon Mr. Biggar arose, and not alone Mr. Butt, but the entire House were 
astounded as they never were before by the interpretation which was given to 
his leader's words by "the man from Cavan." He arose at five o'clock and re- 
sumed his seat at a few minutes before nine. He furnished himself with acts 
of Parliament and blue-books by the dozen, and read such copious extracts 
(always within the rule of debate in the House of Commons) that before long 
he was talking or rather reading to empty benches. A friendly count inter- 
rupted him once ; but the requisite forty members made their appearance, and 
he proceeded leisurely again. About this time — it was then half-past eight — 
his voice began to give out, and he was called to order by the Speaker for not 
addressing his remarks to the chair. But I think that in this connection I had 
better give the account of the scene as it appears in Hansard (vol. ccxxiii., 
p. 1458) : 

" The hon. member proceeded to read extracts from the evidence before 
the Westmeath Committee — as was understood — but in a manner which ren- 
dered him totally unintelligible. At length 

" The Speaker, interrupting, reminded the hon. gentleman that the rules 
required that an hon. member, when speaking, should address himself to the 
chair. This rule the hon. gentleman was at present neglecting. 

"Mr. Biggar said that his non-observance of the rule was partly because 
he found it difficult to make his voice heard after speaking for so long a time, 
and partly because his position in the House made it very inconvenient for 
him to read his extracts directly toward the Chair; he would, however, with 
permission take a more favorable position. 



14 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" The hon. member accordingly, who had been speaking from below the 
gangway, removed to a bench nearer to the Speaker's chair, taking with him a 
large mass of papers, from which he continued to read long extracts, with 
comments. 

"At length the hon. member said he was unwilling to detain the House at 
further length, and would conclude by stating his conviction that he had proved 
to every impartial mind that the Government had made out no case for the 
maintenance of this monstrous system of coercion, and that their proposal was 
perfectly unreasonable. The hon. gentleman, who had been speaking nearly 
four hours, then moved his amendment." 

This was the scene which Mr. Parnell was present at on his initial visit to 
the House of Commons, as member of that body. And he improved the occa- 
sion by then delivering his maiden speech. It was full of hesitancy, as was his 
usual mode of delivery at that time ; but it was full of Irish national spirit, and 
it was the reading between the lines of the speech of the young member that 
made Mr. Biggar his early parliamentary friend. 

From that friendship was destined an Irish policy which, for the first time, 
England and England's statesmen were forced to recognize. They advanced 
slowly; but Biggar as the instructor, and Parnell as the pupil and colleague, 
soon planned a map of action than which none other begat such benefits to the 
people of Ireland. 

Joseph Gillis Biggar was born in Belfast on August i, 1828. He was 
educated at the Belfast Academy, and in this connection I shall quote Mr. T. 
P. O'Connor's resume" of Mr. Biggar's boyhood : 

" The record of his school-days is far from satisfactory. He was very 
indolent — at least he says so himself — he showed no great love of reading — in 
this regard the boy, indeed, was father to the man — he was poor at composi- 
tion, and, of course, abjectly hopeless at elocution. The one talent he did 
exhibit was a talent for figures. It was, perhaps, this want of any particular 
success in learning, as well as delicacy of health, which made Mr. Biggar's 
parents conclude that he had better be removed from school and placed at 
business. He was taken into his father's office, who — as is known — was en- 
gaged in the provision trade, and he continued as assistant until 1861, when he 
became head of the firm. This part of his career may be here dismissed with 
the remark that he retired from trade in 1880." 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 15 



His first attempt to enter Parliament was made in 1872 at Londonderry. 
He had not the most shadowy idea of being returned ; but even then he had 
mentally formulated the policy which he afterward carried into practice with 
such inflexible resolve. The candidates were Mr. Lewis, Chief Baron Palles, 
and Mr. Biggar. 

At that same time Mr. Palles, as Attorney-General, was prosecuting Bishop 
Duggan and other Catholic bishops for the part they took in the election of 
Colonel Nolan for Galway. Mr. Biggar offered to retire from the contest if 
Palles would discontinue the prosecutions ; but the Attorney-General refused, 
and as a consequence he was defeated, and Biggar was satisfied. 

In 1874 he stood for Cavan, by the request of Mr. Butt, and was elected, 
and until his death he represented that constituency. I shall afterward have to 
mention him — the "Father of the Parnell movement" — more fully ; but here 
I shall now use the words of one of the members of the Irish party who was 
very dear to him, i. e., Mr. Healy : 

" Other men write their memoirs or have their biographies written for 
them. But, alas ! when nature planted in the breast of Mr. Biggar the spirit 
of obstruction, she neglected to provide him with any gift of introspection, so 
that the most skillful tapping doth but coldly furnish forth his inward yearn- 
ings and tendings. 

" Still, acting on information I have received, I timidly venture to set 
down the fact that one hears at times, in tracing his early development, of a 
certain grandmother. Thereat, of course, a smile arises ; but I desire to place 
her memory on reverent record, for she entertained the boyhood of the father 
of obstruction with stories of Antrim fight — where her brother, subsequently 
an exiled fugitive, was wounded — and of many another '98 chronicle of the 
Presbyterian rebels. It is a long cry, no doubt, from pikes to blue-books, but 
the Irish conflict is not a genteel duel with a courteous enemy, who proffers a 
choice of weapons ; so in place of the insurgent granduncle, who fled the 
country after the Antrim collapse, the Biggar family came in sequence to be 
represented in the warfare by the blocking boomerang of the member for 
Cavan." 

After the spirit of the speech of Mr. Biggar on that historical 22d of 
April, he and Mr. Parnell resolved to do battle with the 650 members of the 
House of Commons. Mr. O'Connor says of them : 



IQ CHARLES STEWART PARKELL. 

"They had before them enemies who, in the ferocity of a common hate 
and a common terror, forgot old quarrels and obliterated old party lines ; while 
among their own party there were false men who hated their honesty, and 
many true men who doubted their sagacity. In this work of theirs they had to 
meet a perfect hurricane of hate and abuse ; they had to stand face to face 
with the practical omnipotence of the mightiest of modern empires ; they were 
accused of seeking to trample on the power of the House of Commons, and 
six centuries of parliamentary government looking down upon them in menace 
and reproach." 

It was, perhaps, the boldest enterprise ever engaged in by any two men ; 
in the history of parliaments it was the most rash and difficult and hopeless 
task which was ever undertaken, not only by two men, but by even a party. 
To conquer " the first assembly of gentlemen in the world " was a monumental 
task ; but Biggar and Parnell — both imbued with the same patriotism — decided 
within them that, for the benefit of Ireland, it was necessary ; and even kindli- 
ness Of feeling was stamped out remorselessly in their merciless obstruction of 
the business of England and advocation of Irish remedial measures. 

For this they were subject to the most scathing criticism and abuse, not 
alone from their opponents and the English press, but from their colleagues. 
Here is an example of how the London newspapers spoke of Mr. Biggar in 
those early days of " active policy " : 

" Heaven knows that I do not scorn a man because his path in life has led 
him amongst provisions. But though I may unaffectedly honor a provision- 
dealer who is a member of Parliament, it is with quite another feeling that I 
behold a member of Parliament who is a provision-dealer. Mr. Biggar brings 
the manner of his store into this illustrious assembly, and his manner, even for 
a Belfast store, is very bad. When he rises to address the House, which he did 
at least ten times to-night, a whiff of salt pork seems to float upon the gale, 
and the air is heavy with the odor of the kippered herring. One unacquainted 
with the actual condition of affairs might be forgiven if he thought there had 
been a large failure in the bacon trade, and that the House of Commons was 
a meeting of creditors and the right hon. gentlemen sitting on the Treasury 
Bench were members of the defaulting firm, who, having confessed their inabil- 
ity to pay ninepence in the pound, were suitable and safe subjects for the abuse 
of an ungenerous creditor" {London World, April 28, 1875). 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. \j 



The policy of Mr. Biggar, or rather which was developed by him and car- 
ried on by him and Mr. Parnell, was the simple process of " blocking" the Gov- 
ernment bills in order to bring them under the half-past twelve rule, " which 
forbids opposed measures to be taken after that hour." To the disgust of every- 
body else Mr. Biggar or Mr. Parnell would rise in their places and talk the sub- 
ject beyond the time allowed for its consideration. In this way they became 
more practised in speaking and, feeling their way, obtained a more intimate 
knowledge of the rules of the House. 

" How," said a young follower of Mr. Parnell's, " are you to learn the rules 
of the House ? " " By breaking them," was the prompt reply ; and as a matter 
of fact it was in this way that he himself became such a master of the rules of 
that most decorous of assemblies. 

How far he had mastered the rules of the House may be learned from the 
following account of one of the stormy scenes which at that time both Mr. 
Biggar and Mr. Parnell were in the habit of creating in the British Parliament. 

On July 25, 1877, a violent scene occurred. The House was in committee 
on the South African Bill. Mr. Jenkins had rendered himself obnoxious to 
some of the members of his own party by his opposition to the measure, and Mr. 
Monk accused him of abusing the forms of the House. Mr. Jenkins rose to 
order, vehemently denied the charge, and then moved that those words be taken 
down. Mr. Parnell at once rose. " I second that motion," he said ; " I think 
the limits of forbearance have been passed. I say that I think the limits of for- 
bearance have been passed in regard to the language which hon. members oppo- 
site have thought proper to address to me and to those who act with me." At 
once Sir Stafford Northcote, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
leader of the House, rose and moved that the latter words of Mr. Parnell be 
taken down. The motion of Mr. Jenkins was irregularly got rid of by the inter- 
vention of the chairman of committees— Mr. Raikes — who declared that the 
words of Mr. Monk were not a breach of order. The chairman, however, pro- 
ceeded to raise another subject of dispute by calling upon Mr. Parnell to with- 
draw his statement " accusing hon. members of this House of intimidation." 
" The hon. member must withdraw that expression," said Mr. Raikes, amid the 
cheers and intense excitement of the House. Mr. Parnell rose to explain ; he 
was constantly interrupted by " conversation, coughs, exclamations, cries, and 
groans." He denounced the Bill as mischievous both to the colonists and to 
\ 






18 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



the native races, and instituted a comparison between Ireland and the South 
African colonies; "therefore," he went on, "as an Irishman, coming from a 
country which had experienced to the fullest extent the results of English inter- 
ference in its affairs, and the consequence of English cruelty and tyranny, he felt 
a special satisfaction in preventing and thwarting the intentions of the Govern- 
ment in respect to this Bill." 

The moment these words had been uttered, the House thought that it had 
at last caught the cool, wary, and dexterous Irish member in a moment of for- 
getfulness.and passion, and that he had given the long-sought opportunity for 
bringing him to account. Amid loud shouts, Sir Stafford Northcote rose and 
moved that the words of Mr. Parnell be taken down ; and this having been 
done, he proposed that all further business should be stopped, and that the 
Speaker should be sent for. The Speaker was brought in, the House filled with 
an excited crowd, and Sir Stafford Northcote moved that Mr. Parnell " be sus- 
pended till Friday next." Mr. Parnell was called upon to explain. Either from 
anger or calculation, he showed no anxiety to accept the chance of exculpation. 
It was not till the Speaker had four times repeated the offer that Mr. Parnell got 
up. The speech he delivered is very characteristic of his temper and his methods. 
While the House was storming around him, and he was brought face to face with 
the prospect of undergoing parliamentary censure after a manner unprecedented, 
and thus viewed with horror by all the men around him, he began by a technical 
objection. He pointed out that another motion had been proposed to the 
House before that of Sir Stafford Northcote's, and that, therefore, the motion of 
the leader of the House was out of order. But the Speaker ruled this objection as 
untenable ; and Mr. Parnell had to proceed with his own defense. He addressed 
to the House, which was now in a state of almost frenzied excitement, a speech full 
of the boldest defiance and of stinging suggestion. The House was now beside 
itself with rage, and there were loud shouts that Mr. Parnell should withdraw, as 
is the custom when the conduct of a member is under consideration. Mr. 
Parnell left his seat and calmly proceeded to a place in the Speaker's gallery, 
and from this point of vantage looked down on the proceedings in which he 
himself was the subject of debate. 

Sir Stafford Northcote now moved that " Mr. Parnell having wilfully and 
persistently obstructed the public business, is guilty of contempt of the House, 
and that Mr. Parnell for his said offense be suspended from the service of the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 19 



House till Friday next." In those days the House was not yet ready to take 
strong steps against individual members, and there was a recoil from the propos- 
al of Sir Stafford Northcote. Then the Liberals remembered the bitter suffer- 
ing they had had to undergo from Tory obstructives in their days of power, and 
were not altogether indisposed to make some capital out of the distresses of the 
Tories — obstructives raised in the whirligig of time to such positions as Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies and Judge Advocate-General, and Chairmen of Com- 
mittees. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, speaking from the front Opposition Bench, 
reminded Mr. Hardy of his famous avowal "to thwart all the attempts of the 
late Ministry to carry out their army reforms." Then a fatal flaw had been 
pointed out in the proposal of Sir Stafford Northcote. The words of Mr. Par- 
nell had been examined with cooler temper after the first pounce upon him. It 
was discovered that the charge against him was, after all, nothing but a mare's 
nest. He had certainly declared his interest in " thwarting and preventing the 
designs," not of the House, which, of course, would be obstruction, but " of the 
Government," which is the object and the legitimate pursuit of every opponent of 
a Ministerial measure. It was seen that Sir Stafford Northcote had lost his head 
in his eagerness to throw a Christian to the lions, and he was obliged to postpone 
further debate upon the question until the following Friday. In every one of 
his subsequent tussles with the Government Mr. Parnell preserved the same char- 
acteristic savoir /aire. His motto seemed to be, "fait ce que tu doit advienne 
que pourra" and no man ever kept that determination more truly and steadfastly 
than did he in his dealings with even the most trivial matter connected with the 
cause of Ireland. 

And it is just as well here to explain some of the influencing reasons that 
induced these two young members of Parliament to formulate so aggressive a 
policy. Undoubtedly they were largely guided by the singularity of their posi- 
tion. They were members of a party whose leader (Mr. Butt) believed rather in 
obliging the Government than in opposing it. His policy was the very oppo- 
site of aggressive in Parliament. His fundamental object — and I had it from 
his own lips in the house of a mutual friend at Porchester Terrace, London, 
shortly before he died — was to "pretend to favor the party in power "; which 
policy, he said, " would induce them to be more civil to the demands of Ire- 
land." 

Under the guidance of such a legal master mind as was Butt's, it is possible 



20 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

that a united Irish party (if he could have formed one) could have done much, 
advancing on these lines, as Mr. Parnell did afterward by an opposing condi- 
tion of tactics ; but he (Butt) either misunderstood the opportunity or was un- 
equal to it. He certainly could not or would not understand the " active policy " 
of his two young lieutenants, and he said of them, after a stormy scene in the 
House, " Either obstruction will put down the House of Commons, or the 
House of Commons will put down obstruction." 

But this is beside the present issue. What I now wish to show is the con- 
dition of affairs in Ireland, which, stimulated by their youth and successes, forced 
Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell to adopt the " active policy." The fact of its being in 
distinct contradiction to all hitherto known rules of the English Parliament — or, 
rather, to the habits of English parliamentarians ; for they were, and took good 
care to be, always strictly within the rules — did not affect them. There was only 
one thing which affected them, and that was the condition of the people of Ire- 
land and how that condition could be improved — within the limits of the Con- 
stitution. 

Their chief grievance lay in the land question and its unevenness of govern- 
ment. And here it will be instructive to explain the meaning of the " three in- 
terests in the land " which form the basis of the position of the Irish agricultural 
classes. I do not think I can do better than by quoting Sir Charles Russell. 
He says : 

" There are three interests which directly depend upon and are concerned in 
the cultivation of the land. There is the laborer who works on it for his daily 
wage ; there is the farmer who cultivates it, and who employs the labor on it — 
in Ireland those two are commonly the same ; and there is the landlord who gets 
his rent for the occupation of the land by the tenant. If one of those three 
classes must go to the wall, which is the last that should go to the wall ? I say 
the laborer, for he is dependent on his daily wage to put food into his own mouth 
and into the mouths of his children. He must have his daily wage for his daily 
work. It may be a reduced wage, but he must have his wage. Who comes next 
in order ? The man who tills the land — the man whose labor and expenditure 
upon it in the shape of labor is necessary to its production. . He is only one de- 
gree removed from the daily laborer, and, in the case of Ireland and in the case 
of the greater portion of the small farming classes, he is in fact, by himself and 
his children, the laborer on the land who, ordinarily, in other conditions, would 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



21 



be the daily wage receiver. At the bottom of this whole question, in the ordi- 
nary just conception of Englishmen, of Irishmen, aye, and of men all over the 
world, there is — I care not about the so-called sanctity of contract — there is this 
principle : that rent, that the true economic rent, is a fair proportion of the sur- 
plus proceeds from a given farm after the daily wage of the daily laborer has been 
paid, and after there has been at least decent sustenance for the man, who by his 
own hand and the hands of his children tills the land, and by his labor gives it its 
productive power. 

" That has not been the view taken or acted upon by Irish landlords, or the 
view until of late years taken by the Irish tenants. The result is that the Irish 
tenant has been, broadly speaking (I am now, of course, referring to the smaller 
class of farmers who most need protection), reduced in his surroundings of house, 
of clothing, of food, to a sordid condition, to a condition such that his class has 
been described, and truly described, as the worst clad, worst fed, and worst 
housed on the face of the civilized globe." 

And it is quite apropos, and will be also instructive in this connection, to 
give an idea of how the land was apportioned in 1878-9. The total area of Ire- 
land is 20, 159,678 acres. Of this 

452 persons held, each, more than .... 5,000 acres 

135 " " " .... 10,000 

90 " " " .... 20,000 

14 " " " .... 50,000 

3 " " " .... 100,000 

1 person held ....... 170,119 

292 persons held 6,458,100 acres — or about one-third of the entire 
island; while 744 persons held 9,612,728 acres, or nearly one- 
half of the island. 



In Ireland the twelve largest owners hold, in the aggregate, 1,297,888 acres ; 
and their respective acreages are — 170,119, 156,974, 121,353, 118,607, 114,881, 
101,030, 95,008, 94,551, 93,629, 86,321, 72,915, and 69,501. Two-thirds of the 
entire island are held by 1,942 persons. 

There was no peasant proprietary in Ireland. The farmers were nearly all 
tenants-at-will or from year to year— not even holding leases ; that is to say, that 
out of the total 600,000 farmers of Ireland, 500,000 occupied their holdings in 



22 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

this way. This tenancy-at-will has been variously described. I shall give two 
definitions of it. A German traveller — Von Raumer — says : 

" How shall I translate it — tenant-at-will — wegjabare or jagabare ? But 
the conditions are not, properly speaking, analogous ; for to the foxes and wolves 
there is a season when they may not be hunted ; but a tenant-at-will can be and 
is hunted all the year round. And here he is considered a criminal if he defends 
his home." 

Almost in the same vein speaks Lord Duffenn — than whom no greater. 
English statesman lives to-day. Here is what he says about tenants-at-will, 
and I think his definition of the position will be highly instructive to those 
who do not well understand the conditions which beset the Irish farmers in 
their unequal battle for life : 

" What is the spectacle presented to us by Ireland ? It is that of millions 
of persons, whose only dependence and whose chief occupation is agriculture, 
for the most part cultivating their lands ; that is, sinking their past, their pres- 
ent, and their future upon yearly tenancies. What is a yearly tenancy ? Why, 
it is an impossible tenure ; a tenure which, if its terms were to be literally 
interpreted (and its terms are literally interpreted in Ireland), no Christian 
man would offer, and none but a madman would accept." 

This is truly a pretty estimate of the character of the Irish landlords from 
such a statesman as Lord Dufferin. His words are : " No Christian man would 
offer .... such an impossible tenure, and none but a madman would accept." 
Well, I fear that, in the respect to accepting any terms to remain upon their 
farms and in the homes of their ancestors, the people of Ireland were not con- 
spicuously sane. But it was the Government, which permitted nearly 4,000,000 
of its people to live in this miserable plight, and who, by their acquiescence, 
approved the tenancy-at-will and placed the tenant in the position, so naively 
described by Von Raumer, which fact was the prime cause of the outrage ; and it 
was against that Government and for the purpose of ameliorating the conditions 
of those same tenants-at-will that Messrs. Parnell and Biggar adopted a new 
Irish parliamentary policy. 

And I have an idea, too, that the reply of O'Connell, when he was asked, 
"What are your propositions for the relief of Irish distress?" had much to 
say to the formulation of the plans of Parnell and Biggar — or, at least, guided 
them by inference. He said : • 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 23 



" If they ask me what are my propositions for the relief of distress, I 
answer, first, tenant right. I would propose a law giving to every man his own. 
I would give the landlord his land, and a fair rent for it ; but I would give the 
tenant compensation for every shilling he might have laid out on the land in 
permanent improvements." Perhaps another historical saying might have guided 
them. It was Henry Grattan's : " The best advice I can give my fellow-citizens 
upon every occasion is to keep knocking at the Union." And that is precisely 
what Mr. Parnell did. As said Grattan in a most remarkable letter of his, so 
acted Parnell and 3iggar from the moment of their entry into Parliament until 

their deaths "I shall then — as at all other times I hope I shall- — prove 

myself an Irishman, and that Irishman whose first and last passion was his 
native country." 

It is decidedly curious that in the three quotations I have given, from 
O'Connell and Grattan,. almost the entire aim and tactics (in a general way) of 
Parnell and Biggar were outlined. But it is even more peculiar that until the 
advent of these two men none others dared to beard the British lion and " keep 
knocking at the Union." And they undertook that phenomenal task alone — 
discountenanced even by their own party — and they succeeded. 

In the whole history of a Parliament — in any country — there does not exist 
such a monumental evidence of what two men, believing in their cause, can do 
against such fearful odds. Conviction alone inspired in them that wonderful 
determination and indefatigable perseverance to which the six hundred and fifty 
legislators of Great Britain unwillingly bowed, 

" If I did not feel for my people and know that I was justified," said Mr. 
Parnell, " I never could have continued the unequal struggle." And when he 
spoke these words he might have included Mr. Biggar in the conviction, for I 
heard him say almost those identical words when a colleague of his told him he 
should take a rest. Mr. Biggar replied :".... So long as our wrongs are 
not righted, I shall remain in harness." 

And he did ; for he died "in harness" — an unrelenting enemy to his coun- 
try's foes, and beloved even by his enemies for his peculiar sympathy for the 
suffering and his incorruptible championship of their rights. 

For a long time the press, people, and statesmen of England found pleasure 
in saying that the chief cause of Irish distress was the want of industry, or the 
incapability of the people to adapt themselves to industrial pursuits ; but this I 



04 CHARLES STEWART V Q \RNELL. 

shall disprove, from the mouth of one of the greatest English statesmen — Lord 
John Russell. Of course the speech, from which I quote, was made long pre- 
vious to the time of Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell ; but the conditions were 
precisely similar, and even less satisfactory, when Lord Russell made this 
important statement in the English Parliament. 

" There is no doubt," he said, " of the fertility of the land ; that fertility 
has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers of all nations." 

He was equally emphatic in denying that these miseries were due to the 
character of the people. 

"There is no doubt either, I must say, of the strength and industry of the 
inhabitants. The man who is loitering idly by the mountain-side in Tipperary 
or in Deny, whose potato-plot has furnished him merely with occupation for a 
few days in the year, whose wages afid whose pig have enabled him to pay his 
rent and eke out afterward a miserable subsistence — that man, I say, may have 
a brother in Liverpool, or Glasgow, or London, who by the sweat of his brow, 
from morning to night, is competing with the strongest and steadiest laborer of 
England and Scotland, and is earning wages equal to any of them. 

" I do not, sir, therefore think that either the fertility of the soil of Ireland 
or the strength and industry of its inhabitants is at fault." 

And he wound up with these remarkable words : 

" If you wish to maintain the Union — if you wish to improve the Union, 
to make the Union a source of happiness, a source of increased rights, a source 
of blessing to Ireland as well as England, a source of increased strength to the 
United Empire, beware lest you in any way weaken the link which connects 
the two countries. Do not let the people of Ireland believe that you have no 
sympathy with their afflictions, no care for their wrongs, that you are intent 
only upon other measures in which they have no interest" (Hansard, lxxxvii., 
p. 516). 

But such philanthropy and justness of expression was lost upon the "first 
assemblage of gentlemen " composing the British Parliament. However, it is 
not uninstructive to know that at that time (1846), even one English Minister 
had the manhood to speak the truth concerning Ireland. 

And now (as all of these matters will be of use to the reader in the consid- 
eration of what I shall afterward say concerning this movement) I shall give a 
tabulated account of the abortive attempts which were made to redress the im- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



25 



moral condition of the land laws of Ireland between the years 1871 and 1880 — 
the time when Mr. Parnell, as leader, objected his policy against the parliament- 
ary phalanx of Great Britain. 



Date. 



1871 
1872 
1873 
1873 
1873 
1874 
1874 
1874 
1874 
187s 
1875 
1876 
1876 
1876 
1877 
1877 



1879 
1879 
1879 
1879 
1879 



Bill. 



Landed Property, Ireland, Act, 1847, Amendment Bill... . 

Ulster Tenant Right Bill 

Ulster Tenant Right Bill 

Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 

Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, No. 2.. 
Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, Amendment Bill.. . 
Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, No. 2.. 

Ulster Tenant Right Bill 

Irish Land Act Extension Bill 

Landed Proprietors', Ireland, Bill 

Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill,. 
Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill.. 

Tenant Right on Expiration of Leases Bill 

Land Tenure, Ireland, Bill 

Land Tenure, Ireland, Bill 

Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill- 
Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill. 

Tenant Right Bill-. = 

Tenant Right, Ulster, Bill 

Tenants' Improvements, Ireland, Bill 

Tenants' Protection, Ireland, Bill 

Ulster Tenant Right Bill 

Ulster Tenant Right Bill, No. 2 

Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Bill ... 

Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill. 
Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, 

No. 2 

Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
Ulster Tenant Right Bill 



Introduced by 



Serjeant Sherlock 

Mr. Butt 

Mr. Butt 

Mr. Butt 

Mr. Heron 

Mr. Butt 

Sir J. Gray 

Mr. Butt.. 

The O'Donoghue. 

Mr. Smyth 

Mr. Crawford. . . . 
Mr. Crawford .... 
Mr. Mulholland. . 

Mr. Butt: 

Mr. Butt 

Mr. Crawford. . . . 
Mr. Herbert. . . . 

Lord A.Hill 

Mr. Macartney. . . 

Mr. Martin 

Mr. Moore 

Mr. Macartney. . . 

Lord A.Hill 

Mr. Herbert 

Mr. Taylor 



Mr. Downing. . . 

Mr. Taylor 

Mr. Macartney . . 



Fate. 



Withdrawn. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 
Rejected. 
Withdrawn. 
Dropped. 
Rejected. 
Rejected. 
Withdrawn. 
Dropped. 
Rej. by Lords- 
Withdrawn. 
Rejected. 
Dropped. 
Rejected. 
Withdrawn. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 

Rejected. 
Dropped. 
Dropped. 



From this it will be seen that of all those 28 bills, covering a period of 
nine years, only one passed the House of Commons, and that was rejected by 
the House of Lords. I do not wish to appear to speak lightly of the great serv- 
ices of Isaac Butt or of his successor in the leadership of the Irish party — Mr. 
William Shaw ; indeed, I do believe that their "elastic policy" — because of the 
sincerity of their intention — prepared the way, more or less, for the more vigor- 
ous policy of Mr. Parnell. But it is perfectly just to point out that the good 
intentions of the " Home Rule leaders" obtained nothing, directly, in the shape 
of Land Reform, whereas the determination and unbending demands of Mr. 
Parnell carried the ball between the posts, against every opposition. 

Before the era of the Home Rule movement, and since the Union, several 
bills were passed by the English Parliament, which were (or were not) intended 
to benefit the landholders of Ireland. 



26 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

In i860, a retrograde act, known as Deasy's Act, was passed, at a time 
when Irish parliamentary representation stood indeed at a very low and discredit- 
able ebb, for the country had not recovered from the shock, the want of faith 
created by the betrayal of the independent opposition party formed and created in 
1852. This act, as was every act passed up to that time, was passed to help the land- 
lords, and not, as I shall show presently upon high authority, one passed for the 
protection of the tenant. It turned the relation between landlord and tenant 
from relation by tenure into relation by contract ; it gave certain facilities in the 
matter of proceedings in ejectment ; it recognized and formulated what had been 
an existing law in Ireland, going back for a long period — a state of law un- 
known in this country, and, as far as I know, unknown in Scotland, I mean the 
right of ejectment pure and simple for non-payment of rent. There is no such 
thing known to English law. Yet it has been the law for years in Ireland. 
English law is, that you can recover as for condition broken, if you have a clause 
of re-entry in your contract ; but upon a letting pure and simple of land with- 
out that clause (which is the state of things in Ireland) you could not maintain 
the action of ejectment merely for non-payment of rent. 

But I will mention it a little out of date, perhaps the most remarkable act 
passed in relation to Ireland on the Land Question was passed in the year 1848. 
I mean the Encumbered Estates Act. It was supposed that all that was wanted 
in Ireland was what is called the introduction of capital ; that all that was 
wanted in Ireland was to dispossess, to get rid of ancient owners of land who 
had by their own improvidence and their extravagance, or by that of their an- 
cestors, become wholly overwhelmed by debt, and unable to discharge those 
duties which are supposed to be connected according to English notions with 
the ownership of land. A more complete misconception of the state of things 
in Ireland than that act evinced can hardly be pointed to. For what did it do ? 
I am not denouncing Irish landlords, neither do I wish to confound them in one 
general body. There are men amongst them who, I doubt not, have struggled 
under difficulties to do their duty. I believe there are many more amongst 
them who are suffering less for their own sins than for the sins of their fathers, 
and from the evils of the system under which they have lived. But what was 
the effect of this act ? It is hardly conceivable that a legislature in which Ire- 
land was represented — imperfectly, it is true — that a legislature purporting to 
deal with Ireland should have so misconceived the position as to have passed 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 27 



that act. For what did it do ? It sold the estates of the bankrupt landlords 
to men with capital, who were mainly jobbers in land, with the accumulated 
improvements and interests of the tenants, and without the slightest protection 
against the forfeiture and confiscation of these improvements and interests, at 
the hands of the proprietor newly acquiring the estate. It was intended, I doubt 
not, to effect good. It proved a cause of the gravest evil, for it is literally true 
to say — and there is not one, I think, who will dispute the statement — that 
amongst the worst cases of landlord oppression in Ireland have been the cases 
of men who, with their fresh capital, came in and bought these estates, looking 
to the percentage of return which they could get for their money — jobbers in 
land who were not restrained by any feelings — and such feelings did to a certain 
extent exist — of kindness because of ancient connection between an ancient 
peasantry and an ancient proprietary house. And I have seen rental after rental 
of property sold in the Encumbered Estates Court, in which, as an inducement 
to the intending buyer, were held forth the alleged low rentals at which the prop- 
erty was then let, and the possibility held out to the expected purchaser that he 
might, by another turn of the screw, raise the rent and increase his percentage 
return for the land he was buying. It is a sad, pitiable, remarkable proof of the 
utter ignorance which prevailed, I say it broadly and boldly, even among men well 
intentioned, as to what the needs of the Irish question in this regard demanded. 

These were the effects of the " Land Acts " passed prior to the inaugura- 
tion of the Home Rule movement by Mr. Butt ; and I have shown what was 
the result of his endeavors. They failed — then, it is true ; but I think the most 
just way of putting it is this : England was not then prepared to examine into 
the affairs of Ireland justly, nor even judiciously. Force became the element 
that necessitated her doing so — not physical force ; but the constitutional 
methods of parliamentary obstruction and parliamentary force which were insti- 
tuted by Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell, and developed under his — the latter's — 
leadership. 

This peculiar success of Mr. Parnell was in a great measure due to his dis- 
tinction of character rather than to his mastery of subject. Here is what one 
of his colleagues says of him in the Dublin Freeman s Journal, Oct. 17, 1891, 
shortly after Mr. Parnell's death : 

" A stranger visiting the House of Commons would find it hard to under- 
stand why it was that he produced such an effect there. He stumbled con- 



28 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

stantly, had a very scant vocabulary, and by no means a large stock of ideas. 
He was also very careless in the preparation of his materials, and put off things 
to the last moment. It was quite common to find him ploughing laboriously 
through figures of which he had no mastery whatever in the library at the mo- 
ment when he should have been in his place expecting to be called. On such 
occasions his colleagues went through untold agonies. They never believed 
that he would be in his place in time, and it was only at the last moment that 
he would appear, armed with bundles of papers, badly arranged and badly 
digested. But the House of Commons is as sensitive as a barometer to per- 
sonal character, and it always felt the full force of this extraordinary man's 
strength when he rose to address it ; and yet to a stranger there would be no 
indication whatever of strength. He spoke in a low tone of voice, and often 
with an intonation to his audience that made the speech sound more like a 
soliloquy than words addressed to the other men ; but on rare occasions there 
were outbursts of that raging fire of fierce and devastating passion that raged 
within. Then the whole tone of voice changed. It had a hoarse, sullen sound, 
the mouth being almost cruel, and the right arm was held forth in denunciation. 
I have seen the House of Commons literally quail before one of those outbursts 
of savage though apparently cold rage, and the remark was once made by a 
colleague that he looked almost like an invincible in one of these accesses of 
passion. He himself hated speaking, and always went through agonies of 
nervousness when he had to prepare, and even after he had begun. The hands 
twitching behind, the nails dug into the palms, showed the price he had to pay. 
But, nevertheless, it was all wonderfully effective. The House always grew 
still, in recent years, whenever he rose to speak, and even the Tories treated him 
with marked respect." 

In contradistinction to this, it will not be uninstructive to quote the criti- 
cisms of the London World upon Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar at the time 
when their obstructive policy was beginning to take hold and impress the mem- 
bers of the House of Commons and the public. As I have already stated, Mr. 
Parnell was not, at the beginning of his political career, a good speaker ; but 
the following extracts from the World of March 29, 1876, will amusingly ex- 
plain the bigoted mannerisms of English writers and critics concerning Irishmen 
at that time : 

" Mr. Parnell is always at a white heat of rage, and makes with savage 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 29 



earnestness fancifully ridiculous statements, such as you may hear from your 
partner in the quadrille if you have the good fortune to be a guest at the annual 
ball at Colony Hatch. 

" The writer, who cherishes a real affection for Ireland, and who has an un- 
affected admiration for the genius of her sons, bitterly reproaches Meath that 
it should have wronged Ireland by making such scenes possible under the 
eye of the House. 

" Mr. Biggar, though occasionally endurable, is invariably grotesque, 
.... but Mr. Parnell has no redeeming qualities, unless we regard it as an 
advantage to have in the House a man who unites in his own person all the 
childish unreasonableness of the ill-regulated suspicion, and all the childish 
credulity, of the Irish peasant, without any of the humor, the courtliness or 
dash of the Irish gentleman." 

It was a terrible fight which was engaged in by these two Irishmen. 
Even the fairest-minded Englishmen misunderstood or willingly decided not to 
understand their motives or aims. But this was measurably excusable ; for the 
people of England knew nothing of Ireland directly, and believed the writings 
of their historians, and journalists, and statesmen. // was not a good school to 
learn the truth from tipon such a subject. Even our friend, Mr. Lecky — that 
fairest and most painstaking and impartial of English historians who wrote 
about Ireland — makes the following statement, which, though quite true as to 
figures, is distorted in the deduction. He says : 

" Ireland is, no doubt, still very poor, if compared with England or even 
with Scotland ; but its poverty consists much more in the absence of great 
misery. It has been recently stated that while paupers are in England as i to 
20, and in Scotland as i to 23 of the population, in Ireland they are only as 1 

to 74-" 

It is such authoritative statements as this that from time to time misled, 
not alone the people of England, but the people of the world of both hemi- 
spheres. It certainly is true that, at the time when Mr. Lecky wrote, the 
pauperism (official) of Ireland was comparatively less than one-third of that 
existing in either Scotland or England. But these official statistics are grossly 
misleading. 

The reason why the official pauperism of Ireland seems to be so small is 
not because of the non-existence of extreme poverty there ; but because of the 



30 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

hereditary objection of the poor of Ireland to go to " the workhouse," as the 
pauper institutions are called. 

All of these things, to which I am now referring, point only to causes for 
the resenting nationality or nationalism of Parnell and Biggar ; but, as we pro- 
ceed, it will be evident that unless we could show such causes, their peculiar 
opposition to the tactics of the moderate Home Rulers, or rather objection to 
their methods and their defiance of England, would be then unexplainable and, 
I shall say, unjustifiable. How judicious were the plans of the two patriots, 
subsequent events, of which we shall have much to say later, prove overwhelm- 
ingly. 

As I have already shown, their active policy did not bear fruit, nor was it 
recognized until after 1877. It was known then, as well as now, that the potato 
crop of Ireland was the mainstay of the peasantry. And here are some statis- 
tics of how the seasons, about this time, fluctuated the quantities of that product. 
I quote only from official statistics and they will not be uninstructive. 

In 1876 the value of the potato yield was ^12,464,382 

In 1877 " " " " " " 5,271,822 

In 1878 " " " " '* " 7.579-5 12 

In 1879 " " " " " " 3,431,028 

As it is admitted by every English writer that the Irish peasantry " de- 
pended chiefly upon this product of the land," it is not strange that the result of 
such a decrease in the production should bring the people close to the 
famine line. That it did, I shall have to, afterward, explain more fully. But 
this was one of the first things which directed the attention of Biggar and 
Parnell to the necessities of their countrymen. 

It should not be that the decrease in the natural production of a certain 
tuber could create famine or even distress in a land so fruitful as Ireland. For 
its size, there is no country possessing such valuable fisheries ; the land of Ireland 
produces more bushels to the acre of most kinds of grain than any in the world ; 
its mineral wealth is indisputable. Sir Robert Kane says that " at one time 
Ireland was dotted all over with factories for the reduction of its iron ore." As 
a matter of fact, the best authorities admit that the iron of Irish manufacture 
was the most perfect of its kind in Europe. It was made or smelted with wood 
charcoal, and was of a quality not inferior to that manufactured on the Baltic 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. Ql 



to-day. It was purer, more easily handled, and more capable of being converted 
into use for the highest and most delicate specimens of art in iron. 

But these days are gone, and now only one mine in Antrim shows returns 
of the product of the mineral (iron) deposits of the country. One of 
the reasons for this, which I quote from a pamphlet upon Irish industries, writ- 
ten by me some years ago, was that when the confiscation of Irish lands and 
properties became a fact in deed, the " settlers" did not replant the woods which 
were cut down all over Ireland for the purpose of making charcoal to reduce the 
ore. They were satisfied with their immediate gain, and soon the " hum of in- 
dustry," which before their coming resounded all through the land, was hushed ; 
the iron works — mentioned by Dr. Kane — began to cease to exist ; and with 
them the beautiful forests and wooded hillsides of Ireland gave place to naked 
plains and bleak-looking mountain ranges. And here I must pay tribute to a 
Home Ruler, who, though rrot a thorough nationalist, was still an ardent Irish- 
man. I mean Dr. Lyons — a Corkman — and, some years ago, Member of Par- 
liament for Dublin city. He recognized the denuding of Irish forest land and 
the consequent climatic changes, as well as the (I shall have to coin a word) de- 
picturesquing of the island, and he introduced a bill, which was afterward passed, 
to re-aforest the country. The value of that bill was not immediately apparent ; 
but in a very few years, inadequate as were its provisions, the face of the coun- 
try will be at least slightly changed toward the treeless condition in which it 
existed from the period I have named until he took up the case. 

After the timber was gone the settlers were too idle to use other methods 
for the reduction of the iron. In the pamphlet to which I have referred, I have 
proven that Irish ore could be reduced and sold in England at a lesser cost than 
it can be produced at the pit's mouth in England, by importing Welsh coal and 
coke for the purpose ; but, then, a general dampening of commercial spirit in the 
island, because of the penal enactments of England, killed all enterprise in Ire- 
land, and even the successors of the settlers deemed it inopportune to reopen 
the iron industry. 

When that was dead, they turned their attention to wool-growing, as the 
least troublesome occupation. That industry begat a great impetus in Irish 
industrial pursuits ; but again, on the petition of the manufacturers of England, 
King William said : " I shall do all that in me lies to destroy (?) the industries 
of that country " — meaning Ireland. Result — exit woollen industry. 



32 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

But I am not dealing with the Irish history of that period ; I am endeavor- 
ing to show causes — which have not even yet ceased entirely to exist — why Mr. 
Parnell and Mr. Biggar instituted their war of obstruction and fearless demand 
in the English House of Commons. And I shall now quote the words of the 
Right Rev. Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath. The incident to which he refers 
happened in September, 1847, but I mention it because it proves that while, at 
the time Mr. Parnell and the Land League were battling against such oppres- 
sion, such scenes were not infrequent ; they were of constant occurrence all right 
through the chapter from 1800 until his (Parnell's) vigorous policy ended them. 
Here is what Bishop Nulty says : 

"In the very first year of our ministry, as a missionary priest in this 
diocese, we were an eye-witness of a cruel and inhuman eviction, which even 
still makes our heart bleed as often as we allow ourselves to think of it. 

" Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes in one day 
and set adrift on the world to gratify the caprice of one who, before God and 
man, probably deserved less consideration than the last and least of them. And 
we remember well that there was not a single shilling of rent due on the estate 
at the time, except by one man ; and the character and acts of that man made 
it perfectly clear that the agent and himself quite understood each other. 

"The Crowbar Brigade, employed on the occasion to extinguish the 
hearths and demolish the homes of honest, industrious men, worked away with a 
will at their awful calling until evening. At length an incident occurred that 
varied the monotony of the grim, ghastly ruin which they were spreading all 
around. They stopped suddenly, and recoiled panic-stricken with terror from 
two dwellings which they were directed to destroy with the rest. They had 
just learned that a frightful typhus fever held those houses in its grasp, and had 
already brought pestilence and death to their inmates. They therefore suppli- 
cated the agent to spare these houses a little longer ; but the agent was inexor- 
able, and insisted that the houses should come down. The ingenuity with 
which he extricated himself from the difficulties of the situation was character- 
istic alike of the heartlessness of the man and of the cruel necessities of the work 
in which he was engaged. He ordered a large winnowing-sheet to be secured 
over the beds in which the fever victims lay — fortunately they happened to be 
perfectly delirious at the time — and then directed the house to be unroofed 
cautiously and slowly, ' because,' he said, ' he very much disliked the bother 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 33 



and discomfort of a coroner's inquest.' I administered the last sacrament of 
the Church to four of these fever victims next day ; and, save the above-men- 
tioned winnowing-sheet, there was not then a roof nearer to me than the canopy 
of heaven. 

" The horrid scenes I then witnessed I must remember all my life long. 
The wailing of women — the screams, the terror, the consternation of children — 
the speechless agony of honest, industrious men — wrung tears of grief from all 
who saw them. I saw the officers and men of a large police force, who were 
obliged to attend on the occasion, cry like children at beholding the cruel suf- 
ferings of the very people whom they would be obliged to butcher had they 
offered the least resistance. The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal 
equinoxes descended in cold copious torrents throughout the night, and at once 
revealed to those houseless sufferers the awful realities of their condition. I 
visited them next morning and rode from place to place administering 
to them all the comfort and consolation I could. The appearance of men, 
women, and children, as they emerged from the ruins of their former homes — 
saturated with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot, shivering in every 
member from cold and misery — presented positively the most appalling specta- 
cle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors in a circle all around — and for 
many miles in every direction — warned their tenantry, with threats of their 
direst vengeance, against the humanity of extending to any of them the hos- 
pitality of a single night's shelter. Many of these poor people were unable to 
emigrate with their families ; while, at home, the hand of every man was thus 
raised against them. They were driven from the land on which Providence 
had placed them; and, in the state of society surrounding them, every other 
walk of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result ? After 
battling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at last graduated from the 
workhouse to the tomb ; and in little more than three years, nearly a fourth 
of them lay quietly in their graves." 

Another and even more horrible case which happened at a later period 
conveys an excellent idea of a practice upon many of the Irish estates. It is 
"enacted " that no tenant upon these estates shall marry without the consent of 
the landlord. I know of one of these estates, owned by Captain Perry, of 
Kinsale, County Cork. It is in the county of Tipperary ; but the one to which I 
now refer is that of the notorious Marquis of Lansdowne. I shall tell the story 



34 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

concerning this custom on Lord Lansdowne's estate in the words of the late 
Sir John Gray. In a speech, made by him in October, 1869, he says : 

"In the book he had already quoted from — ' Realities of Irish Life' — there 
was told a very pathetic story of ' Mary Shea,' the pretty black-eyed girl of 
seventeen, who lived with her parents on a mountain-farm. Mr. Trench tells 
with touching pathos how, when the ' hunger '—the name given by the people 
to the famine — came, Mary's mother died, and was buried in the garden, be- 
cause Mary and her father had not strength to carry her to the churchyard. He 
tells how Mary smothered the bees she had reared herself, though they all knew 
her well, and sold their store of honey for 15^., and bought meal, and kept her 
father alive for a month, but how, when it was exhausted, her father died too, 
and how he, too, was buried in the garden by herself and ' Eugene,' and how, 
thus left an orphan and alone, the kind-hearted Eugene took home 'Mary Shea' 
to his mother's house and shared the scanty meal with her. Mr. Trench with 
great power described, in the book he held in his hand, this sad ' reality,' and 
told how, when walking one day through his pleasure-grounds, he saw two bright 
spots shining from behind a holly-tree, and coming nearer he saw that behind 
the tree something moved, and forth came Mary Shea, the graceful Irish maiden 
of seventeen with Spanish face, and almost kneeling, she said with blushing 
confidence : ' Please, your honor, will you put Eugene's name on the book in- 
stead of mine.' Then a beautiful tale was told of Mary's woes, of her modesty, 
of her beauty, and of her marriage, on perusing which no English matron or 
noble maiden with tender or womanly heart could restrain their tears, so sweetly 
was told the affecting story of Mary Shea. But alas ! Mr. Trench did not tell 
the dismal truth of landlord tyranny that was concealed behind the rose-tinted 
romance of this 'reality of Irish life'; he did not tell why it was that this blush- 
ing maiden of seventeen, the black-eyed Mary Shea, came to him, a man she 
had never before seen, to tell of her innocent love, and to introduce Eugene ; 
he did not tell that by ' the rule of the estate,' had Mary Shea or any other ten- 
ant dared to get married without the leave of ' his honor ' the agent, she would 
be hurled from her farm and the roof torn down about her bridal-bed (cries of 
' Shame on him ! ' and loud cheers). He (Sir John Gray) would now read for 
them an extract from a petition to a noble marquis whose name was given in 
the title-page of Mr. Trench's book, as one of those nobles whose agent he is, 
which would tell some of the true realities of Irish life ; for these were realities 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 35 



of Irish life of which no glimpse was given in Mr. Trench's book. In the title- 
page of that book it would be found that the author, Mr. Trench, was agent to 
a noble marquis and two other great estated persons in Ireland, and in M. Per- 
raud's ' Ireland in 1862,' he found a copy of a petition presented no farther back 
than 1858, by the whole body of the tenantry of the noble marquis, who was, he 
believed, the landlord of black-eyed Mary Shea (cries of ' Name, name '). The 
name of the landlord was the Marquis of Lansdowne, the estate was in Kerry, 
and this was the petition : 

'We (the tenants) have been made keenly sensible of this abject depend- 
ence by certain rules and regulations which are now forced on this estate. By 
these rules no tenant can marry, or procure the marriage of his son or daughter, 
without permission from your lordship's agent, even when no change of tenancy 
would arise ' (cheers, and loud cries of ' Shame '). 

"That was the petition of the tenantry of Lord Lansdowne in April, 1858. 

" He would now ask leave to read, not from the petition of the tenantry, 
but from the judgment of the Chief Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer, 
another illustration of the 'rule of the estate,' which forbade a tenant to give 
shelter even to a relative in his most dire distress upon that very same property. 
Passing sentence upon some persons in the dock who were accused of the man- 
slaughter of a boy of twelve years of age, Chief Baron Pigott said : ' The poor 
boy whose death you caused was between twelve and fourteen years of age.' 
Now, mark the history of that boy, as told by the Chief Baron : ' His mother 
at one time held a little dwelling from which she was expelled. His father was 
dead. His mother had left him, and he was alone and unprotected. He found 
refuge with his grandmother, who held a little farm, from which she was re- 
moved in consequence of her harboring this poor boy, as the agent of the prop- 
erty had given public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms 
would be the penalty inflicted upon them if they harbored any persons having 
no residence on the estate.' These two cases, not of eviction, but cases where 
eviction did not occur, showed that the tenantry were, because of the extraor- 
dinary powers conferred by law on landlords, in such a state of serfdom, that 
the mother could not receive her daughter — that the grandmother could not re- 
ceive her own grandchild unless that child was a tenant on the estate (' Shame,' 
'Inhuman') — and the result in the case he was referring to ... . was this, 
that the poor boy, without a house to shelter him, was sought to be forced into 



36 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

the house of a relative in a terrible night of storm and rain. He was immedi- 
ately pushed out again, he staggered on a little, fell to the ground, and the next 
morning was found cold, stiff, and dead (sensation). The persons who drove 
the poor boy out were tried for the offense of being accessories to his death, 
and their defense was, that what they did was done under the terror of ' the 
rule of the estate,' and that they meant no harm to the boy. (' Shame.')" 

And all of these things happened by the tacit connivance of the Govern- 
ment. But now we must advance more quickly toward the true aim of Mr. 
Parnell's life, although it would have been impossible to properly illustrate it 
without first showing the causes, or rather the predisposing causes, which induced 
him and his great colleague, J. G. Biggar, to enter upon the " war " I am presently 
treating of. But before I proceed, I am attracted to once again quote the 
words of Mr. Rutherford, which I find in his introduction to ihe volume which 
he entitles "The Fenian Conspiracy." In the preceding and succeeding clauses 
to the quotation this gentleman sneeringly deprecates the action of those Irish- 
men, referred to, whom he calls "Ribbonmen"; but, desperate as was their act, 
it is now considered justifiable. In France, America, or even in England, the 
killing of a man because of the defiling of a maiden is never visited with the 
punishments attaching to such a crime (?) in the general sense, and it will be 
strictly within the memory of our readers that no later than last summer a New 
York jury acquitted Pasqualina Robertielli for a similar assassination. But in 
Ireland, where such a crime is looked upon with much more horror than it is in 
any other country, the open punishment of it is looked upon as another reason 
why the " Irish are in a state of semi-barbarism." A fri-end of mine said once, 
upon the occasion when that scoundrel, Lord Letrim, was killed: "God help 
the critics of such vengeance." I agree with him that they need a good deal 
of moral assistance. But here is Mr. Rutherford's story : 

" Here one instance will be worth pages of disquisition. We give one ; it 
occurred under our own observation, and we knew the parties chiefly concerned. 
It was many years ago, in our early youth ; but the incident made an impression 
on our memory that cannot be effaced ; we recollect the details as vividly as 
though it were but yesterday. 

" In the town of , situated in the west of Ireland, there dwelt a widow 

and her daughter, of good class, but narrow means. She managed to eke out 
these by letting- furnished lodgings, educating her daughter more in accordance 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 37 



with what had been than with what was. At sixteen Ellen G , pretty, 

amiable, and retiring, as well as highly trained, was one of the most attractive 
girls of the place. Her suitors were numerous : but she accorded small favor 
to any. At length a distant relative, of the ' ould blood and creed,' like herself, 
became the tenant of the widow's apartments. He was a young man of showy 
person, insinuating manners, and profligate habits. Not an open profligate ; he 
had brains enough to know that open licentiousness limits its owner's powers of 

mischief, but one of the quiet, dangerous order, otherwise Mrs. G would 

not have admitted him beneath her roof. He remained long enough to effect 
his purpose, the seduction of Ellen ; then he quitted the house. More than 
that, he boasted of his success, and refused to make reparation. 

. " The case was a gross one : the widow and her daughter were generally 
pitied, and the seducer as generally condemned. The Ribbon lodges of the 
locality took the matter in hand. In a very short period the seducer received a 
note, ordering him to undo the mischief he had done, by marrying his victim. 
This notification he disregarded, as he did a second and a third of like import. 
But, though disobeying them, the gay Mr. X — — knew that these mandates 
were not to be despised. He looked well to his goings and his comings, he 
selected his paths and ordered his hours, and he always went armed to the 
teeth. 

" Four or five weeks went by, and people began to forget the affair, partic- 
ularly as the mother and daughter had left the town. One Sunday evening — 
we remember it well — the weather was remarkably fine ; it was after church- 
time, just as it began to gloom in early autumn. We must explain that the 

favorite evening promenade of the people of lay through, or rather round, 

the centre of the town, which was traversed by a broad river connecting a neigh- 
boring lake with the not distant sea ; and this river was crossed by two bridges. 
The bridges might be half a mile asunder, and the streets adjoining were 
spacious and well built, by far the handsomest of the town. ' Round the 

Bridges' — old denizens of will remember the phrase — was, we repeat, the 

favorite evening walk ; the circuit might, perhaps, be twelve furlongs or there- 
abouts. 

"On" this particular Sunday evening it was alive with well-dressed people 
of both sexes and all ages — ourselves among the throng, with two companions 
of our own age. As we sauntered slowly along down R Street, we were 



38 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

passed by the gay Mr. X , walking at his usual pace toward his lodgings in 

the same street. Immediately afterward there passed three young men, whom 

we also knew, walking somewhat faster. The three soon came up with X . 

Then — almost simultaneously — we saw three rapid blows dealt, and heard a 

dull, sickening sound, X fell at once. His assailants threw their bludgeons 

over the houses and ran off. The street was full of people, many of whom saw 

the whole ; but no attempt was made to arrest the assassins. X was raised 

and borne to his lodgings : he still breathed, but he never spoke again, hardly 
groaned. He was dead before morning, his skull having been beaten in. 

" We hurried home to relate what we had seen ; but hardly had we got 
through the opening sentences when a hand was laid upon our lips, and we 
were ordered to be silent about the matter, under the sternest penalties. It 
was the same with our companions ; the same, indeed, with all the town. 

" Everybody knew the reason of the murder and its perpetrators. The 
latter designated themselves by disappearing, without any other apparent reason, 
but everybody regarded the thing as a punishment, a little too severe, it might 
be, but still merited by the conduct of X . The story is a fair illustra- 
tion of Ribbonism in one of its least noticed but not least important 
aspects." 

Herein, in a great measure, was the reason for most of the so-called agrarian 
crime in Ireland. Of course the natural resentment of injustice had goaded 
the people to the commission of crime ; but, as a matter of fact, most of the 
landlord and agent murders in Ireland were not committed because of land 
grievances. To my own personal knowledge, and in proof of the justice of the 
vengeance that was wreaked on Lord Letrim, many of the younger landlords of 
Ireland make, or rather made, the defiling of the beautiful daughters of the 
peasantry — their tenants — a condition of their remaining in their holdings. 

It was a clear, although cloaked, alternative — Dishonor or Eviction! Irish 
manhood rebelled, and blood paid the penalty of the insult. I distinctly remem- 
ber one case in the south of Ireland where a landlord made open proposition to 
ruin a lovely girl as the price of her father's tenure. The unfortunate man, 
already in desperate straits, was weak enough to consent. But immediately 
after the would-be defiler of his daughter had left the house he came to his 
senses; the horror of his un-Irish iniquity assailed him, and he communicated 
the fact to some of his neighbors. As a result, that young landlord was clubbed 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 39 



almost to death within twenty-four hours, and the tenant's lease was signed 
without reference to the ruin of his daughter. 

The recital or quotation of such incidents as this may seem to be foreign 
to a story of the life of Mr. Parnell ; but they are not. They only go to prove 
that the Government of Ireland, which permitted such a condition of things 
and punished the avengers, upheld its iniquity. And they adduce fact and 
reason for the pugilistic efforts of Messrs. Parnell and Biggar. 

Here is yet another of the conditions under which the tenantry of Ireland 
groaned when Mr. Parnell entered political life. I shall explain it very briefly 
by quoting the words of a British cabinet minister — the Right Hon. R. Lowe, 
of skating-rink fame : 

" If the tenant chooses to improve the land, unless he takes the precaution 
to obtain the consent of the landlord — whether he increases the value of the 
property or not — he has no business to meddle with it. It is in the nature of 
a deposit on his hands, and he ought to return it as he received it. He receives 
it for a particular purpose, and for that purpose only ought he to use it. If he 
uses it for another purpose — to build a house on it, for instance — it may be a 
great improvement, but he has no right to do it ; it is beyond the contract he 
entered into." 

In no part of the' world did such an iniquitous condition of tenure exist, 
and, as a matter of fact, in no part of the world ever did such a system of hiring 
of land obtain. I shall give a few instances within my own personal knowledge. 
A friend of mine held a farm of 200 acres, at fifteen shillings an acre — or ^"150 
per year. It had been in the family for generations ; but the lease was soon to 
run out. Buildings had been erected upon it ; and it was, when I knew it, a 
snug little place — a quite comfortable and exceedingly pretty country home — 
one of the prettiest in the district. 

Now, be it remembered — for I saw the original lease — that when this farm 
was first leased, about 100 years ago, there was not a single building on it, and 

it was all " unvvorked land." During the three generations of the B family, 

who were the tenants, the bog-land was all reclaimed ; outhouses built ; the 
ground " cleared of stones," and a really fine mansion erected, in which during 

two generations all of the B s were born. That is the picture of how things 

were with this family in 1879. The lease ran out in September, 1880, and to- 
ward the end of the preceding year (1879), tne a g en t of the landlord sent notice 



40 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

that if B desired a renewal of the lease, it would be given at the rate of 

£2 10s. per acre, or ^500 for the holding, per year. I regret to say, from my 

standpoint of principle in such matters, that B compromised the proposal, 

and now pays £2 per acre, or ^400 for the holding. 

Why he did this must be obvious to all readers of Irish history. He did 
not wish to leave the home which his fathers built, nor the locality around which 
his earliest recollections were festooned in pleasant memories. That dead past 
was the living motive for his sacrifice of principle, and was dearer to him than 
affluence ; and he consented to be cheated by his landlord rather than leave that 
hallowed spot — home. 

To my mind, and I told him so — and at that time I had not read Mr. 
Lowe's statement — it would have been much better to have refused to consider 
the landlord's proposal ; gradually destroy the buildings ; take as much out of 
the land as possible, and return the holding to him, at the expiration of the lease, 
in as nearly as possible the same wretched condition as it was in when it was 
leased to his great-grandfather, a hundred years before. This exactly conveys 
Mr. Lowe's idea when he says, " It (the land) is in the nature of a deposit on 
his (the tenant's) hands, and he ought to return it as he received it." Quite 
so ! and if, in all cases of Irish eviction or dispossession for refusal to pay in- 
creased rent for land or holdings improved by the tenant, this were done, there 
would be much fewer evictions. 

But the Right Hon. Mr. Lowe contradicts himself in a breath, within the 
quotation which I have used ; for he says, " If the tenant chooses to improve 
the land, unless he takes the precaution to obtain the consent of the landlord — 
whether he increases the value of the property or not — he has no right to med- 
dle with it." Than which a more scandalous statement, from the minister of 
any Government, was never uttered. But this has all along been the policy of 
English statesmen — Protect the strong. The weak will continue to 

EXIST. 

Because of the hereditary love of the Irish farmer for the place in. which 
he was born, they in most cases accepted leases of any kind. Landlords availed 
themselves of this feeling, and leases containing the most obnoxious contracts 
were forced upon the tenants by the wholesale. This course was planned by 
the landlord advocates in Parliament to offset the cry against tenancy-at-will ; 
but it simply bound the tenant, by the bribe of a lease, to do that which, as 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 41 



Lord John Russell said, " no Christian man would suggest, and none but a mad- 
man accept "; and in their anxiety to remain in their holdings, the farmers of 
Ireland, in most instances, accepted these leases. 

Returning to the matter of compensation for disturbance and for improve- 
ments, which, I have referred to indirectly, I desire here to quote the evidence 
of Mr. Hancock, given before the famous Devon Commission. It is, of course, 
given from an English standpoint ; but it is the sworn testimony of a man 
whose word was then considered to be unimpeachable, and it bears out, weakly, 
the point which I have advanced as having formed one of the strongest influ- 
ences upon the formulation of Messrs. Parnell and Biggar's determination to 
institute the " active policy." Mr. Hancock said : 

" I consider tenant right beneficial to the community because it establishes 
a security in the possession of land, and leads to the improvement of the estate 
without any expenditure of capital on the part of the landlord. It is very con- 
ducive to the peace of the country, for almost every man has a stake in the 
community, and is therefore opposed to agrarian outrage as well as riots. The 
laws are more respected. There are none of those reckless, daring men who are 
ready for any deed, under the consciousness that their situation cannot be worse. 
The liberty of the subject is more respected, and imprisonment has greater ter- 
rors, from the fact that almost any tenant can obtain bail for his future appear- 
ance in court, or for his future good behavior. The landlords are compelled to 
recognize the tenant right, as, in several instances in this neighborhood, where 
they have refused to allow the tenant right, the incoming tenant's house has 
been burnt, his cattle houghed, his crops trodden down by night. The disal- 
lowance of tenant right, so far as I know, is always attended with outrage. A 
landlord cannot even resume possession to himself without paying it. In fact, 
it is one of the sacred rights of the country which cannot be touched with im- 
punity, and if systematic efforts were made amongst the proprietors of Ulster to 
invade tenant right, I do not believe there is force at the disposal of the Horse 
Guards sufficient to keep the peace of the province. And when we consider 
that all the improvements have been effected at the expense of the tenants, it is 
perfectly right that this tenant right should exist ; his money has been laid out 
on the faith of that compensation in that shape." 

To my mind this was very impartial evidence from such a man — an Irish 
land-agent himself. But, then, he was not the agent of an absentee, or of a 



42 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

landlord who eternally clamored, " Increase the rents — do what you please ; but 
send me money." This is what Mr. Hancock said 25 years after he gave the 
evidence already quoted, and in studying it, it would be well to observe that he 
says Lord Lurgan was "a resident landlord." 

" My evidence in 1844 was prepared under the advice and with the concur- 
rence of the late Lord Lurgan, a warm and true friend of Ireland, who was for 
25 years in the possession of his estates, and as a resident landlord devoted much 
time and money to their development. The evidence was well and cordially 
received by the tenants, and I now confirm the same after 25 more years' ex- 
perience, thus giving a continuous history of nearly 50 years on an estate in 
Ulster, managed to the satisfaction of landlord and tenant, in which tenant right, 
peace, prosperity, and progress prevailed, on which all religions have ever been 
treated with perfect equality and respect, and on which the police force numbers 
less than half the average stationed throughout the country." 

It does not matter one whit where the estate was — in Ulster or Munster — 
the evidence is most striking, particularly coming from the source that it did. 
In most cases, upon the estates of resident landlords, there is not such distress 
and oppression as is exhibited elsewhere ; but the value of Mr. Hancock's state- 
ment I measure by the fact that he was an alien and was therefore better able 
to, dispassionately, estimate the true meaning of the law as it affected the Irish 
tenantry and their practical condition and necessities. 

Another condition of affairs which forced itself upon the attention of 
Messrs. Biggar and Parnell was the iniquitous operation of the Poor Law Act. 
According to what is known as the Gregory Act, no person was entitled to 
relief or admission to the workhouse if they held more than a quarter of an 
acre of land, unless they surrendered it. I have already alluded to the marked 
disinclination of the Irish poor to go to the workhouse ; but it was a monstrous 
thing that when they were in dire distress they were refused relief (" outdoor 
relief" it is called) simply because they held a quarter of an acre of land and 
refused to give it up. 

I have intimate knowledge of the working of this act, as I was myself for 
years an elected member or "guardian" of the Kinsale Union Poor Law 
Board. And I shall here explain how that Board (the " Board of Guardians ") 
is constituted and why it was that, because of its construction, the meaning 
of the act has so often been frustrated. The Boards of Guardians of the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 43 



Unions of Ireland are partly elected by the people and partly appointed by 
the Lord Lieutenant. The latter class of members are called " Ex officio 
Guardians." They are all — in fact it is stipulated in the act that they must be 
— Justices of the Peace. The Board consists of an equal number of ex officio 
Guardians and of those elected by the people (both men and women house- 
holders being allowed to vote at these elections). This division is monstrously 
unfair; but the conditions are aggravated in this way. The voting for the 
elected Guardians is one of the strangest anomalies in the system of voting in 
existence and was adopted by the Government solely in order that the ex officio 
members — i. e., the landlord class — should hold a governing majority in every 
Poor Law Board. Every £4. householder in the towns and ^12 holder in the 
country is entitled to one vote. But those who held or occupied property valued 
at ^250 or over, were entitled to five votes each — a corresponding scale entitling 
tenants and householders to a plurality of votes according to their rateable valu- 
ation ; for instance, a person rated at ^50 was entitled to two votes ; ^100, 
three votes; and ^150, four. Besides these rate-adjudged votes for the occu- 
piers of property, there was also a ''property vote," which entitled the landlords 
to a similar number of votes as had their tenantry, and this, added to the ad- 
mitted intimidation of the landlords, practically nullified the popular vote of 
the electors of the different districts. 

By reason of this strangely constituted system of selecting Guardians of 
the Poor, the Boards were entirely governed by the landlords and their nominees 
from the institution of the act until the time of the Land League. The officials 
of the Unions were all chosen from among the impecunious friends of the mem 
bers of the Tory majorities, and the poor were scandalously neglected. 

I cannot give more striking proof of this than by telling of the action of 
the Poor Law Board of the Kinsale Union, at different periods from 1846 to 
the present time. According to the Census Commissioners : " The plague 
which fell upon Ireland in 1846-47 was of a peculiarly virulent kind. It pro- 
duced at once extreme prostration, and every one struck by it was subject to 
frequent relapses ; in Kinsale Union, out of 250 persons attacked, 240 relapsed." 
Here is a brief but graphic account of that "Plague" (the famine) taken from 
the Cork Examiner of that period, and quoted by the Census Commissioners in 
their report. It refers chiefly to the district of Skibbereen ; but applies equally 
to the sufferers of the Kinsale Union : 



44 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" Death is in every hovel ; disease and famine, its dread precursors, have 
fastened on the young and the old, the strong and the feeble, the mother and 
the infant ; whole families lie together on the damp floor devoured by fever, 
without a human being to wet their burning lips or raise their languid heads ; 
the husband dies by the side of the wife, and she knows not that he is beyond 
the reach of earthly suffering ; the same rag covers the festering remains of 
mortality and the skeleton forms of the living, who are unconscious of the hor- 
rible contiguity ; rats devour the corpse, and there is no energy among the living 
to scare them from their horrid banquet ; fathers bury their children without a 
sigh, and cover them in shallow graves round which no weeping mother, no 
sympathizing friends are grouped ; one scanty funeral is followed by another 
and another. Without food or fuel, bed or bedding, whole families are shut up 
in naked hovels, dropping one by one into the arms of death." 

It was considered by many of those poor, famine-stricken Irishmen that 
some relief might be obtained at the workhouse, and much as they hated to 
enter that institution — from which they came out branded as paupers — they 
went there by hundreds, never to come out again alive. And it is in this con- 
nection that I wish to refer to the conduct of the landlord-elected officials of 
the Kinsale Workhouse at that time. 

My authority for what I am now about to relate is the late Sister Mary 
Frances Bridgeman- — the famous " Nun of the Crimea," and afterward Supe- 
rioress of the Convent of Mercy at Kinsale. At this time, 1846-47, the Kinsale 
Workhouse was filled to overflowing with starving inmates. The nuns were 
not allowed to visit the sick and plague-str'cken until the resources of the 
officials became exhausted and their duties too burdensome, and even then they 
were only allowed to minister to the wants of the dying, upon sufferance, and 
were oftentimes subjected to the grossest insults. But they did not allow this 
to interfere with their mission of mercy. 

At the southwestern end of the workhouse grounds (which cover several 
acres) there is an uneven strip of land — about half an acre. This land was let 
for grazing until 1883, when the writer, after a fierce fight with the landlord 
clique in the Board Room, succeeded in passing a resolution that it should be 
enclosed with an iron fence. This plot of ground was the "God's acre" of the 
poor who died in this workhouse during the famine. No stone nor sign marked 
their burial place; "over a thousand corpses" — so said Sister Mary Frances — 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 45 



lie buried here. It was simply a great hole in the field where the Union officials 
threw the bodies, coffinless and naked — some of them yet alive, and this I shall 
prove. 

"I shall never forget," said this famous nun to me, "a scene I witnessed 
there." I shall here endeavor to tell the story in her own words; of course it 
will be impossible to repeat them exactly, as it is now nine years since she 
repeated them to me — at the time when I was endeavoring to pass a resolution 
giving the charge of the workhouse hospital to the Sisters of Mercy — of which 
I shall tell more fully afterward ; but her recital of that awful scene fixed itself 
upon my memory, and I do not believe that I shall ever forget the conversa- 
tion. She continued: "One day Sister Mary Vincent and I went up to the 
workhouse to relieve the sisters who had been there during the night. A some- 
thing impelled me to go to the 'dead-house.' It was a sickening sight — over 
a hundred corpses lay there, piled one on the other, the lower ones fast 
decomposing. Tasked one of the officials, 'Why have you not buried them?' 
and he replied : ' Oh ! we are waiting for a couple of good loads. But I think 
we shall have enough by this evening — d — n them.' 

" I remained there all that day," continued Sister Frances, " and in the 
afternoon, about four o'clock, noticing two carts, which had come up the avenue, 
stop at the dead-house, I begged Sister Vincent to come with me to see the 
burial. I cannot tell why I took this fancy ; but I now know it was some spir- 
itual prompting. I went into the dead-house alone — Sister Mary Vincent could 
not bear the stench. One by one they took the naked bodies — men and women 
and children alike — all black and disfigured and already decomposing, and 
flung them on the carts It was awful ! 

" Just then I saw the body of a young man, which had just been brought 
in. It was not discolored like the others, and I went to look at it. And I 
said : ' Surely this young man did not die of the plague ? ' ' Oh ! ' said the official, 
' that doesn't make any difference ; he's here, and we must treat them all the same 
way '; and he at once ordered this body to be thrown into one of the carts. 
Suddenly Sister Mary Vincent, who had again approached us, said : ' Mother 
Frances ! that man is not dead ! ' I was thunderstruck, and I again examined 
the body, despite the angry remonstrances of the officials. The man was not 
dead. I insisted that he should not be buried until Dr. Hornibrooke examined 
him ; and he is alive to-day." And then she told me the name of this man 



46 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

who came so near to being buried alive (I know him well), and she con- 
tinued : 

"And I am convinced that hundreds of our poor, who lie in that plot of 
pauper ground, were buried alive." 

Thank God ! such horrors cannot now occur. But of the more recent 
actions of the Kinsale Board of Guardians I have much to say in explanation 
of the workings of that system. The number of paupers in that workhouse 
average about 190, of whom — during a period of ten years up to 1886 — only 
one was of any other religion than Roman Catholic. Up to 1880 the landlord 
majority of the board ruled it as they wished — they were exclusively Protestant 
— and resented all propositions to erect a small church within the grounds or to 
devote some one hall of the institution entirely for the purposes of the religion 
of the inmates. The nurses employed in the workhouse hospital were gener- 
ally of a different religion from that of the patients ; the proposition to introduce 
the Sisters of Mercy as hospital nurses was denied time after time. But finally, 
in 1882, in consequence of various reports of the House Committee concerning 
the intemperance of the nurses, the ill-treatment of the patients, and certain 
immoralities, which it is unnecessary to relate here, the writer made a final 
attempt to oppose the appointment of nurses from lay-women, of any creed, 
and to place the hospital in the charge of the Sisters of Mercy. 

Notice of motion of this proposal was given, and, to use a parliamentary 
expression, a "four-lined whip" was sent to the Nationalist members. A simi- 
lar one was sent out by the "ex officios"; and, as it was the first time since the 
establishment of the poor-law system that the popular Guardians had even a 
chance of carrying an important motion, proposed by one of them, a tremendous 
effort was made to bring every member of the landlord element to the meeting. 
When the day came, forty of the entire forty-two Poor Law Guardians were 
present ; the two missing ones were landlords, and the motion to admit the 
nuns was carried by a majority of one — one of the Nationalists, a tenant farmer, 
fearing to " vote against his landlord," who was an ex officio member of the 
board. Immediately, Mr. Patrick Sarsfield — the gentleman who recently stood 
for Cork city, in the Tory interest, in opposition to Mr. Flavin and Mr. John 
Redmond — gave notice that on that day month he would move that the resolu- 
tion be rescinded. This time the two missing landlords were impressed from 
England to defeat the proposition to introduce the S ; rters of Mercy, and — to 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 47 



his shame — one of the popular Guardians, himself a Catholic, voted with the 
ex officios, and the patients of the Kinsale Workhouse hospital were shamefully 
condemned to the care of often drunken but always most careless nurses. 
Since that time many fugitive attempts have been made in a similar direction ; 
but each of them has failed even more disastrously than that of 1882. 

What will show even more clearly the iniquity of this system is the fact 
that although the landlords, or "property-holders," have equal votes from the 
lands of their tenants, upon the valuation of which the tenant pays rates, the 
landlord himself pays no rates, and, by the construction of the act, he (the 
landlord) has, as I have proven, a much greater influence in the distribution of 
these rates. A similar condition of affairs exists in nearly every Union in Ireland, 
and considering that, in times of such great distress as that of 1879, the distri- 
bution of relief is directly controlled by the Poor Law Boards in the different 
districts, it is easy to measure the partiality or impartiality of that distribution. 

One other and even greater injustice in the selection of those who are em- 
powered to levy and distribute taxes or rates or " cess " from the farmers of Ire- 
land is apparent in the Grand Jury system of the country. The county Grand 
Juries have entire charge of the roads and public works of the country, and they 
levy a tax, called " county-cess," for the purpose of keeping these works in 
proper repair, or erecting or making new public works — roads, bridges, canals, 
etc., etc. I do not believe that in the entire island there are twenty members 
of a county Grand Jury who are not landlords or landlords' agents. This 
county-cess amounts to millions of pounds sterling in each year, and it is dis- 
tributed not always in accordance with the necessities of the districts from 
which the presentments are sent in, but according to the whim or political or 
other leaning of the member of the Grand Jury representing that section. In 
this way it often happens that a road or bridge or canal is built upon or adjoin- 
ing the property of a particular landlord, in such a manner that it would im- 
prove it, and possibly enable him to grind an increased rental from his tenantry ; 
but the direct purpose for which they, the Grand Jury, were petitioned to grant 
the money for the work was seldom reached. Possibly this is not sufficiently 
intelligible ; I shall, therefore, illustrate it. 

A bridge was agreed to be built between the baronies of Courcies and 
Kinsale, and embracing the Kinalea district. For every reason it would have 
been the better — the best — plan to make the bridge at a point on the river. 



48 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

about two miles and a half below where it now stands. In the usual course the 
rate-payers petitioned the Grand Jury to build the bridge at the lower site ; but 
a bridge higher up the river, although it would cost, and did cost, much more, 
was more desirable to the landed proprietors — ergo, the larger, more expensive, 
and least useful bridge was certified by the Grand Jury, and built at a cost of 
^22,000 ($1 10,000) to the rate-payers of these districts. 

As a matter of fact, if the bridge were built where it would be most use- 
ful, and where the tax-payers desired it to be built, it would have interfered with 
a ferry-right or ferry-tax owned by a Mr. A. T. Foster — a member of the Grand 
Jury — and, to save him the pittance which he received from this ferriage, this 
body of men granted the petition or presentment to build the bridge ; but only 
at a point that would not interfere with Mr. Foster's ferry-rights, and that 
would increase the value of the property of other members of the Grand Jury. 

I use this particular illustration simply because I was personally concerned 
in the matter, and, therefore, the example cannot be questioned. But an even 
more heinous condition of power rests in this Grand Jury. Supposing a case 
of arson, maiming of cattle, or such other loss occurred ; the Grand Jury is 
presented with a petition for damages, and it was in their power to grant such 
bill of damages, and levy it from the districts in which the loss occurred. The 
idea, on the face of it, is not unfair ; but the Irish Grand Juries use this power 
for a far different motive than justice, or the true meaning of the act. As a 
rule, it is the tenantry of the members of this county government who sent in 
their presentments, and the damages are always proportioned according to the 
political standing of the claimant — in the eyes of the Grand Juror of the district. 
Of course, if "one of their own" is the petitioner, the presentment is immedi- 
ately granted ; but so it goes on all through the chapter — one long list of out- 
rages upon common decency and legal upholding of the strong against the 
weak. 

I think it is unnecessary to dwell longer upon these matters. This was 
the state of Ireland and the condition of the government of the Irish people 
when Mr. Parnell appeared on the scene. His sympathies were aroused, and 
his manhood rebelled against the injustice. Before him these same conditions 
had awakened the sympathies of Mr. Biggar, and in the lives of these two men 
can be read the motto : " I am the friend of the friendless." 



SB < 




CHAPTER III. 

Mr. Parnell's Mission in America — The Famine of 1879 — Deposition of Mr. Shaw— The 
Election of Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Race — The Consolidation of the 
Atoms— Gladstone's Treachery. 



HE first Land meeting at which Mr. Parnell attended was held at 
Westport, on June 8, 1879. The resolution to which he spoke was 
this: 

" That whereas many landlords, by successfully asserting in the courts of 
law their power to arbitrarily increase their rents, irrespective of the value of the 
holdings on their estates, have rendered worthless the Land Act of 1870 as a 
means of protection to the Irish tenants, we hereby declare that not only politi- 
cal expediency, but justice and the vital interests of Ireland, demand such a re- 
adjustment of the land tenure — a readjustment based upon the principle that the 
occupier of the land shall be the owner thereof — as will prevent further confisca- 
tion of the tenant's property by unscrupulous landlords, and will secure to the 
people of Ireland their natural right to the soil of their country." 

In his speech he made use of a very remarkable phrase, which had, long 
afterward, a significant meaning in law as well as in the conduction of the land 
agitation. He advised the farmers to " hold a firm grip of their homesteads 
and land." But I shall quote more fully from this historical speech. He 
said : 

" In Belgium, in Prussia, in France, and in Russia the land has been given 
to the people — to the occupiers of the land. In some cases the landlords have 
been deprived of their property in the soil by the iron hand of revolution ; in 
other cases, as in Prussia, the landlords have been purchased out. If such an 
arrangement could be made without injuring the landlord, so as to enable the 
tenant to have his land as his own, and to cultivate it as it ought to be culti- 
vated, it would be for the benefit and prosperity of the country." 

And then he continued : 

" Now, what must we do in order to induce the landlords to see the position ? 

(49J 



50 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

You must show the landlords that you intend to hold a firm grip of your home- 
steads and land." 

On October 2 1 st, in the same year, the Land League was founded at a 
meeting in the Imperial Hotel, Dublin. Mr. A. J. Kettle, who afterward un- 
successfully contested the County of Cork, presided. The following resolutions 
— passed at that meeting — set forth the principles of the organization : 

First. "That the objects of the League are, first, to bring about a reduc- 
tion of rack-rents ; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil 
by the occupiers." 

Second. " That the objects of the League can be best attained (i) by pro- 
moting organization among the tenant farmers ; (2) by defending those who 
may be threatened with eviction for refusing to pay unjust rents ; (3) by facili- 
tating the working of the Bright Clauses of the Land Act during the winter ; 
and (4) by obtaining such reform in the laws relating to land as will enable 
every tenant to become the owner of his holding by paying a fair rent for a 
limited number of years." 

Mr. Parnell was elected president, and Mr. Kettle, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. 
Brennan were appointed honorary secretaries. Mr. J. G. Biggar, M.P., Mr. W. 
H. O'Sullivan, M.P., and Mr. Patrick Egan were appointed treasurers, and a 
resolution was passed calling upon Mr. Parnell to go to America to obtain 
assistance. 

His visit to America, upon this occasion, was one of the most unique of 
historical incidents. I shall pass over the ordinary events that marked his visit 
and come to that one which will live in the history of the United States, i. e., 
when, as the representative of Ireland — a nation seeking for freedom — the legis- 
lators of this great, free and freedom-loving country invited Mr. Parnell to 
address them in session. This is of such importance in the connection between 
America and Ireland that I shall quote, at length, from the report of the occa- 
sion from the Irish World of February 14, 1880 : 

" Washington, D. C, Feb. 2, 1880. 

" The distinguished honor conferred upon Mr. Parnell to-day by the Ameri- 
can Congress is one having but few parallels in the history of America. General 
Lafayette, whose heroic valor in behalf of American liberty, and the conspicuous 
part borne by him in the French Revolution, had endeared him to every lover 
of freedom, was the first of foreign birth to receive the hospitalities of the repre- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 5 ] 



sentatives of the American people. In 1829 Bishop England, of Charleston, 
South Carolina, was invited by Congress to address them upon the theme of 
religion. Again, when Hungary was making her effort to achieve independence, 
and her patriot son, Louis Kossuth, visited our shores for sympathy and aid, the 
doors of the American Congress swung open to welcome him and testify the 
deep sympathy of the American people in the effort of his unfortunate com- 
patriots to follow the example the founders of our Republic had set the world. 

" Long years have elapsed since that day. Empires have fallen, patriots 
have offered up their lives on their country's altar, the standard of Liberty has 
been erected and has fallen under the armed heel of the oppressor, exiles have 
flocked to our shores, and the hardy sons of other climes have sought in this land 
the freedom denied them in the 1 land of their birth; but never, since the recep- 
tion given to Kossuth, has there been such a reception granted to a foe of tyr- 
anny, as has this day been accorded to Charles Stewart Parnell. The heart of 
every Irishman, whether throbbing with anguish at the scenes that meet his eyes 
in his native land, or in this his land of adoption, swelling with pride over the 
historic legends of his country's past grandeur, may well be animated with new 
courage when the American people, through their representatives, tender an 
official reception to Mr. Parnell as ' the representative of the Irish people' 
Not because Mr. Parnell is a Member of the British Parliament, nor merely 
because he appears here to claim our sympathy and aid in Ireland's hour of dis- 
tress and famine, but to Mr. Parnell, the representative of the Irish people in 
their effort to subvert the oppressive Land System which is crushing out their 
independence, converting them from thrifty citizens into paupers and mendi- 
cants, and exiling them from the land of their birth to seek habitation else- 
where. 

" It is to Mr. Parnell, the mouthpiece of oppressed Ireland, the successor of 
Tone, Emmet, Fitzgerald, Mitchel, and other eminent names who represent the 
long-suppressed cry of the Irish people for not only possession of the soil they 
till, but the right to govern their own land, that this distinguished honor has 
been awarded. 

" This rare honor is given to Mr. Parnell not from any personal reasons, 
not from his position in life, not from any distinguished ability on his part, but 
because he represents the new protest of the Irish people against the accursed 
and hellish system fostered by the British Government, which not only makes a 



52 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

brave and heroic people a nation of slaves, but is destructive to every instinct 
that animates a free people." 

The Speaker of the House of Representatives — Mr. Samuel Randall — in- 
troduced Mr. Parnell in the following words : 

" The House will be in order. The session of this evening is in conse- 
quence of a resolution adopted by the House of Representatives, which the 
Chair will now cause to be read by the Clerk." 

Following the reading of the resolution the Speaker said : 

" In conformity with the terms of this resolution I have the honor and 
pleasure to introduce to you Charles Stewart Parnell, of Ireland, who comes 
among us to speak of the distresses of his country." 

The galleries of the House of Representatives were never more closely 
packed than on the occasion of Mr. Parnell's address. The doors of the Capi- 
tol were opened at seven o'clock, but long before that time an immense crowd 
had assembled, and though a heavy storm was prevailing, waited patiently. 
Five minutes after the doors were opened every available space in all the 
galleries except that reserved for the diplomatic corps was occupied. The north 
gallery was occupied exclusively by males. The other galleries were reserved 
for ladies and gentlemen accompanying them. Scores could not obtain admis- 
sion, and were compelled to content themselves peering in at the doors and 
looking over the heads of the more fortunate ones who had secured seats. 

By special resolution of the House the day before, the members were 
allowed to have their wives and children and lady friends accompany them on 
the floor, and the bright colors and gay attire of these latter made the hall more 
picturesque and interesting than it is when only the law-makers are there. 

Besides the Representatives, nearly one-half of the Senators occupied seats 
on the floor. 

When Mr. Randall had called the House to order and introduced his dis- 
tinguished guest, Mr. Parnell immediately began his address — "one of the most 
remarkable utterances of modern times." He said : 

" Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives — 
I have to thank you for the distinguished honor you have conferred upon me in 
permitting me to address this august assembly upon the state of affairs in my 
unhappy country. The public opinion of the people of America will be of the 
utmost importance in enabling us to obtain a just and suitable settlement of the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 53 



Irish question. I have seen since I have been in this country so many tokens 
of the good wishes of the American people toward Ireland, I feel at a loss to 
express my sense of the enormous advantage and service which is daily being 
done to the cause of my country in this way. We do not seek to embroil your 
Government with the Government of England, but we claim that the public 
opinion and sentiment of a free country like America is entitled to find expres- 
sion wherever it is seen that the laws of freedom are not observed. Mr. Speaker 
and gentlemen, the most pressing question in Ireland is at the present moment 
the tenure of land. That question is a very old one. It dates from the first 
invasions of Ireland from England. The struggle between those who ' owned ' 
the land on the one side, and those who tilled it on the other, has been a constant 
one, and up to the present moment scarcely any ray of light has ever been let in 
upon the hard fate of the tillers of the soil in that country. 

" But many of us who are observing now the course of events believe that 
the time is fast approaching when the artificial and crtcel system of land tenure 
prevailing in Ireland is bound to fall, and be replaced by a more natural and 
more just one. I could quote many authorities to show you what this system 
is. The feudal tenure has been tried in many countries, and it has been found 
wanting everywhere ; but in no country has it wrought so much destruction and 
proved so pernicious as in Ireland. We have, as the result of that feudal tenure, 
constant and chronic poverty. We have our people discontented and hopeless. 
Even in the best years the state of the people is one of constant poverty ; and 
when, as on the present occasion, the crops fail and a bad year comes round, we 
see terrific famines sweeping across the face of our land and claiming their 
victims in hundreds of thousands. Mr. Froude, the distinguished English 
historian, gives his testimony with regard to this land system in the following words: 

' But of all the fatal gifts which we bestowed upon our unhappy possession 
was the English system of owning land. Land, properly speaking, cannot be 
owned by any man. It belongs to all the human race. Laws have to be made 
to secure the profits of their industry to those who cultivate it ; but the private 
property of this or that person, which he is entitled to deal with as he pleases, 
land never ought to be, and never, strictly speaking, is. In Ireland, as in all 
primitive associations, the land was divided amongst the tribes. Each tribe 
owned its own district. Under the Feudal System the property was held by the 
Crown, as representing the nation, while the subordinate tenures were held with 
duties attached to them, and were liable, on non-fulfillment, to forfeiture.' 



54 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" Now, I look upon this testimony of Mr. Froude's as a most important 
and valuable one, coming as it does from an English source, and a source which 
cannot be called prejudiced in favor of Ireland. As Mr. Froude says, property 
has its duties under the Feudal System of tenure as well as its rights ; but in 
Ireland those enjoying the monopoly of the land have only considered that they 
had rights, and have always been forgetful of their duties ; so that, bad as this 
feudal tenure must be, it has worked in a way to intensify its evils tenfold. I 
find that, a little further on, Mr. Froude again speaks to the following effect : 

1 If we had been more faithful in our stewardship, Ireland would have been 
as wealthy and prosperous as the sister island, and not at the mercy of the potato 
blight. We did what we could. We subscribed money, we laid a poor-law tax 
upon the land, but all to no purpose. The emigrants went away with rage in 
their hearts and a longing hope of revenge hereafter with America's help.' 

" I could multiply the testimony of distinguished sources and distinguished 
men to the same effect, but I shall content myself by quoting from one more, 
Professor Blackie, the professor of Greek in Edinburgh University, who, in the 
Contemporary Review of this month, writes as follows : 

' Among the many acts of baseness branding the English character in their 
blundering pretence of governing Ireland, not the least was the practice of con- 
fiscating the land, which by real law belonged to the people, and giving it, not 
to honest, resident cultivators, which might have been a politic sort of theft, but 
to cliques of greedy and grasping oligarchs who did nothing for the country 
they had appropriated but suck its blood in the name of land-rent, and squander 
its wealth under the name of fashion and pleasure in London.' 

" Now, we have been told by the landlord party, as their defense of this 
system, that the true cause of Irish poverty and discontent is the crowded state 
of that country ; but the fertile portions of Ireland maintain scarcely any popu- 
lation at all, and remain as vast hunting-grounds for the pleasure of the landlord 
class. Before, then, we talk of emigration as the cure for all the ills of Ireland, 
I should like to see the rich plains of Meath, Kildare, Limerick, and Tipperary, 
instead of being the desert wastes that they are to-day, supporting the teeming 
and prosperous population that they are so capable of maintaining. You may 
drive at the present moment ten or twenty miles through these great and rich 
counties without meeting a human being or seeing a single house; and it is a 
remarkable testimony to the horrible way in which the land system has been 
administered in Ireland that the fertile country had proved the destruction of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 55 



the population, instead of being their support. Only on the poor lands have 
our people been allowed to settle. 

" I have noticed within the last few days a very remarkable testimony to 
this question of overcrowding in one of the newspapers of this country, the New 
York Nation, a journal, I believe, distinguished in the walks of literature, and 
whose opinion is entitled to every weight and consideration. The Nation says 
that the best remedy for Irish poverty is to be found in the great multiplication 
of peasant properties, and not by emigration, as many suppose. There is little 
question that emigration is good for those who emigrate, but it leaves gaps in 
the home population which are soon filled up by a fresh poverty-stricken mass. 

" A writer in the London Times, giving an account of the island of Guern- 
sey, shows that it supports in marvellous prosperity a population of 30,000 on 
an area of 16,000 acres, while Ireland has a cultivatable area of 15,500,000 acres, 
and would, if as densely peopled as Guernsey, support a population of 45,000,000, 
instead of only 5,000,000, as at present. The climate of Guernsey, too, is as 
moist as that of Ireland, and the island is hardly any nearer to the great markets, 
but nearly every man in it owns his own farm, and the law facilitates his getting 
a farm in fee on easy terms. 

" Now, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House of Representatives, the 
remedy that we propose for the state of affairs in Ireland is an alteration of the 
land tenure prevailing there. We propose to imitate the example of Prussia 
and of other continental countries, where the feudal tenure has been tried, 
found wanting, and abandoned ; and we propose to make or give an oppor- 
tunity to every tenant occupying a farm in Ireland to become the owner of his 
own farm. This may, perhaps, seem at first a startling proposition, and I shall 
be told about the rights of property and vested interests and individual owner- 
ship, but we have the high authority of Mr. Froude, the English historian, 
which I have just quoted to you, that land, properly speaking, cannot be owned 
by any man. ' It belongs to all the human race. Laws have to be made to 
secure the profits of their industry to those who cultivate it, but the private 
property of this or of that person, which he is entitled to deal with as he pleases, 
land ought never to be, and never, strictly speaking, is.' We say that if it can 
be proved, as it has been abundantly proved, that terrible suffering and constant 
poverty are inflicted upon millions of the population of Ireland, that then we 
may reasonably require from the legislature that, paying due regard to vested 



56 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

interests and giving them fair compensation, they should terminate the system 
of ownership of the soil by the few in Ireland, and replace it by one giving the 
ownership of the soil to the many. We have, as I have pointed out, historical 
precedents for that course. The King of Prussia, in 1811, by royal edict, see- 
ing the evils of the feudal tenure, transferred all the land of his country from 
the nobles to the tenants. 

" In a cable from London I find that, speaking at Birmingham the other 
day, Mr. Bright proposes to appoint a Government commission to go to Dublin 
with power to sell land of landlords to tenants wishing to buy, and advance 
them three-fourths of the purchase money, principal and interest to be repaid in 
thirty-five years. Such a measure, Mr. Bright believed, would meet the desire 
of the Irish people. The commission should assist the tenant to purchase when- 
ever the landlord was willing to sell. He recommended compulsory sale only 
where the land was owned by London companies, as in the case of large tracts 
near Londonderry. He expressed the belief that self-interest and the force of 
public opinion would soon compel the landlords to sell to the tenants. 

" Now, this proposal is undoubtedly a very great reform, and an immense 
advance upon the present state of affairs, and while we could not accept it as a 
final settlement of the land question, yet we should gladly welcome it as an ad- 
vance in our direction, and be willing to give it a fair trial. The radical differ- 
ence between our proposition and that of Mr. Bright is that we think that the 
State should adopt the system of the compulsory expropriation of the land, 
whereas Mr. Bright thinks that it may be left to self-interest and the force of 
public opinion to compel the landlord to sell. That is the word he uses — 
'compel.' While I agree with Mr. Bright in thinking that, in all probability, 
if his proposal were adopted, the present Land Agitation in Ireland, if main- 
tained at its present vigor, would compel the landlords to sell to the tenants at 
fair prices, I ask the House of Representatives of America what would they 
think of a statesman who, while acknowledging the justness of a principle, as 
Mr. Bright acknowledges the justness of our principle, that the tenants in Ireland 
ought to own the land, shrinks, at the same time, from asking the legislature of 
his country to sanction that principle, and leaves to an agitation, such as is now 
going on in Ireland, the duty of enforcing that which the Parliament of Great 
Britain should enforce. I think you will agree with me that this attempt on the 
part of the British Parliament to transfer its obligations and its duties to the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 57 



helpless, starving peasantry of Connemara is neither a dignified nor a worthy- 
one, and the sooner our Parliament comes to recognize its duties in this respect 
the better it will be for all parties and the Government of Great Britain. 

" Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, I have to apologize for having trespassed 
upon your attention at such great length, and to give you my renewed and 
heartiest thanks for the very great attention and kindness with which you have 
listened to my feeble and imperfect utterances in reference to this question. I 
regret that this cause has not been pleaded by an abler man, but, at least, the 
cause is good, and although put before you imperfectly, it is so strong and so 
just that it cannot fail in obtaining recognition at your hands and at the hands 
of the people of this country. It will be a proud boast for America if, after 
having obtained, secured, and ratified her own freedom by sacrifices unexampled 
in the history of any nation, she were now, by the force of her public opinion 
alone, by the respect with which all countries look upon any sentiment prevail- 
ing in America — if she were now to obtain for Ireland, without the shedding of 
one drop of blood, without drawing the sword, without one threatening mes- 
sage, the solution of this great question. For my part, I, as one who boasts of 
American blood, feeling proud of the importance which has been universally 
attached on all sides to American opinion with regard to this matter, I feel proud 
in saying and believing that the time is very near at hand when you will be able 
to say that you have, in the way I have mentioned, and in no other way, been a 
most important factor in bringing about a solution of the Irish Land Question. 
And then, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, these Irish famines, now so periodical, 
which compel us to appear as beggars and mendicants before the world — a 
humiliating position for any man, but a still more humiliating position for a 
proud nation like ours — these Irish famines will have ceased when the cause has 
been removed. We shall no longer be compelled to tax your magnificent gener- 
osity, and we shall be able to promise you that, with your help, this shall be the 
last Irish famine." 

When the proposition to "give Mr. Parnell the floor of the House" was 
first made, the " capitalistic " press of New York, chiefly the Herald, endeavored 
by every means in their power to influence the members of Congress against 
voting such an honor to Ireland's representative. Here is an example — from 
the New York Herald of December 3, 1879 : 

" The agitators, Parnell, Biggar, Rea, Davitt, and Killen, are the worst 



58 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

enemies of the class in whose name they are exciting Ireland to violence, mur- 
der, rapine, and revolution. The British Government has shown unpardon- 
able weakness and carelessness in allowing these unscrupulous demagogues 
to go so far. It ought, as the guardian of the Irish peasants, to have 
CRUSHED this agitation in the beginning" 

The New York Times and Tribune were quite as virulent ; hut the Con- 
gressmen of the United States were Americans and lovers of freedom, and, 
admiring the efforts of Parnell to regain Irish freedom, they conferred upon 
him this unique honor. Within a week from the. date of Mr. Parnell's address 
in the House of Representatives, not only the Herald, but every paper in 
America, was on the side of the " unscrupulous demagogues " of whom the 
" first paper in America " (the Herald} said such bitter things two months 
before. 

But this has ever been the policy of the press — they are always on the side 
of the strong — and if Mr. Parnell had not such a strong personality, even the 
cause of that island, whose sons did so much for American liberty, would have 
been swamped in the wave of toadyism that at that time governed our leading 
papers. 

The action of Congress was the keynote of America's sympathy with 
Ireland. At Hazelton, Pa., Wilkesbarre, Scranton, Detroit, Chicago — every- 
where — Mr. Parnell and his colleague, John Dillon, were received as the dele- 
gates of Liberty from a nation of bondsmen, and the purses of the American 
people were freely opened for the suffering poor of that nation. And here it 
will be instructive to give the opinions of some of the most prominent Amer- 
icans of that time concerning Mr. Parnell's visit, its meaning and portent, as 
well as on the political position of the Irish people. 

Mr. G. R. Davis, of Illinois, said : " I believe Mr. Parnell's scheme is the 
true remedy for the redemption of Ireland and the amelioration of the condition 
of the Irish nation." 

Mr. Waldo Hutchins, of New York, said : " The iniquitous system of 
land tenure in Ireland is one that cannot but call out the deep indignation of 
her people. When a people are laid under tribute to support a few men in 
luxurious idleness abroad, men who reap where others sow, there must come a 
settled determination to remove the cause of so much evil. Then, when- to this 
is added starvation and famine on the part of her oppressed people, we must 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 59 



sympathize with any measure that will secure relief. The law of mortmain is 
inconsistent with the prosperity of a people, and must be wiped out. Mr. 
Parnell, in calling our attention to other great evils, is doing not only Ireland, 
but the whole world, a service." 

Following in the same strain is the opinion of Mr. William Aldrich, of 
Illinois, who said : " I am very glad Mr. Parnell is with us. I regard the land 
agitation in Ireland as a struggle for life or death. While we are not desirous 
of interfering with the internal affairs of other nations, still, as Americans, our 
sympathies must go out with the oppressed in other lands. That the Irish are 
oppressed, and that large numbers of them are brought to the verge of starva- 
tion, are palpable facts, and this case appeals strongly to our sympathies. I do 
not see how the Irish people can do otherwise than protest against the present 
system ; it is an imperative necessity. They are pushed to the wall, and must 
protest if they would live." 

When Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll — the famous New York lawyer — was 
asked for his opinion, he put the case in a nutshell, and I have often wondered 
why his remarkable words have not been quoted more often. Here are extracts 
from his statement : 

" I know little of Mr. Parnell, but I sympathize with every effort the Irish 
people have made to better their condition. I, regard them as an oppressed 
and suffering people. England has ruled that country with a maximum of 
cruelty and a minimum of sense. The Irish peasant is a slave upon whom is 
laid the responsibilities of a freeman. He works to the extent of his strength, 
has meat about twice a year, lives upon potatoes and skimmed milk, is clothed 
in rags, lives in a hovel with a mud floor, and associates with the pigs and 
chickens that he raises — -for the landlord. 

" When the soil belongs to those WHO USE IT, and to no others, the 
world will be civilized. To own land, and to cultivate what they own, will 
make intelligent patriots instead of ignorant tenants. The tenant system is the 
curse of Ireland. There are two classes dangerous in all governments — Land- 
lords and Tenants. Governments ought to protect : 

" First — The weak against the strong ; 

" Second — The foolish against the talented ; and 

" Third — The individual against the many. 

" We should never forget that man is more important than property, and 



60 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

that things are only valuable in the proportion that they increase human hap- 
piness. All governments should be so administered that industry and honesty 
should stand at least a little higher than idleness and rascality. This world 
ought to be used for the highest good of all the people in it." 

For obvious reasons I have refrained from quoting the opinions of those 
representative American citizens who are of Irish blood ; but I have selected 
those of some of the most prominent men North, South, East, and West, and 
the significance of their statements is important. I shall only give two others, 
the first from Mr. William M. Lowe, of Alabama, and the second from Mr. 
Horace F. Page, of California. 

Mr. Lowe said : " Mr. Parnell's visit to this country is well-timed and well- 
taken. It will accomplish great good. I have always deeply sympathized with 
Ireland in her political as well as financial troubles, and have tried to help her 
out of both. They are the same thing, or rather different phases of the same 
thing. They arise from the same cause — the abnormal condition of land tenure — 
and must have the same solution. I am in favor of Irishmen owning and ruling 
Ireland, and I hope Ireland's wrongs will never cease to be agitated until they 
are righted. It was with this view that I voted for the official recognition of 
Mr. Pamell by the House of Representatives." 

And Mr. Page accentuates the feelings of the American people in this way : 
" Mr. Parnell has my entire sympathy. I consider his object a very laudable 
one, and calculated to do a great deal of good. I cannot but approve of any 
agitation that proposes to put the people in possession of their own soil. No 
country can prosper where the people are denied the right to the soil they culti- 
vate. The American Revolution gave hope to the oppressed the world over, 
and we would be false to our history if we did not, as a people, cordially sym- 
pathize with every people who are carrying on a struggle against oppressive 
measures. We can do no less." 

But it is not of peculiar interest to further pursue these incidents of Mr. 
Parnell's American tour. The facts which I have given are amply sufficient to 
prove how deep and favorable an impression his personality and his exposition 
of Ireland's necessities provoked among America's leading citizens. 

On March 8, 1880, Mr. Parnell was in Montreal, and it was while deliver- 
ing an address there that the news reached him of the impending dissolution of 
the British Parliament. He at once recognized the necessity to return to 




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Fac-simile of Address presented to Mr. Parnell by 
the People of Ireland, on his Return from America 
in March, 1880. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 61 



Ireland. He started for New York the moment his lecture was finished, and 
upon the morning of March ioth — just before he sailed — he laid the foundation 
of the Land League in America. He arrived at Queenstown on March 21st ; 
the dissolution took place on the 24th, and the first election in Ireland on 
April 1 st. 

Mr. O'Connor says of him that "the moment he landed in Ireland he pro- 
ceeded to fight the election with an energy that seemed diabolical. He rushed 
from one part of the country to another, made innumerable speeches, had inter- 
views with most of the parliamentary candidates, himself stood for three con- 
stituencies." The result of his indefatigable work was that out of a total Irish 
representation of 103, sixty-eight men were elected as Home Rulers. And it is 
interesting to note here that Mr. Parnell fought the entire election with ,£1,250 — 
^1,000 of which he obtained as a personal loan. 

On April 29, 1880, the following programme of Parliamentary Land Reform 
was prepared and signed by Messrs. Charles S. Parnell, J, J. Louden, A. J. Ket- 
tle, William Kelly, and Patrick Egan (now United States Minister to Chili) : 

"THE LAND ACT OF 1870. 

" In 1870, Parliament considering it 'expedient to amend the law relating 
to the occupation and ownership of land in Ireland,' passed what is known as 
the Land Act. This act had for object — (i) To provide for the tenant security 
of tenure ; (2) to vest in him the property which he created in his holding by 
the expenditure of his labor and capital ; and (3) to enable tenants to become 
the owners of their holdings. 

" To give effect to these objects provision was made to compensate for dis- 
turbance tenants evicted by the act of the landlord ; to compensate for the loss 
of their improvements, tenants voluntarily quitting their holdings or evicted for 
non-payment of rent, and to empower the Board of Works to advance money 
to tenants for the purchase of their holdings, where landlord and tenant had 
agreed for the sale of same. Has the act succeeded in giving effect to the 
intentions of its authors ? Has it established security of tenure for the tenant 
farmers of Ireland ? Has it secured to them the property which their 
industry and capital may have created in the soil ? Has it prevented the 
arbitrary increase of rent? Or has it, even to a limited extent, established 
a peasant proprietary ? To these questions, we regret, there is but one answer — 



02 CHARLES STEWART PARXELL. 

the Land Act has failed. The experience of the last ten years justifies this asser- 
tion. Within that period tenants have been capriciously evicted, rents have been 
arbitrarily increased, and improvements have been confiscated as if the act never 
existed. To check, if not to render impossible, eviction under notices to quit, pro- 
vision was made (sec. 3) that where a tenant is ' disturbed by the act of the land- 
lord,' the court having jurisdiction in the matter may award him compensation 
for the loss of his holding. The sum to be so awarded is subject to certain limits 
prescribed by the act left to the discretion of the chairman (now the county 
court judge). For example — where a holding is valued at ^10 annually or 
under, the sum awarded ' shall in no case exceed seven years' rent.' It was soon 
judicially decided that, according to the wording of the section, the judge might 
award the whole scale of compensation, or any part of it. This discretionary 
power vested in the court has left the position of the tenant farmer more pre- 
carious than ever. In most cases he could not even hazard a guess as to what 
his rights were, as to what his compensation (if any) might be. In the adjudica- 
tion of claims everything depends upon the skill and moral constitution of wit- 
nesses — upon the ability and uprightness of the judge. Where one chairman — 
a man of broad views, uninfluenced by class prejudices — might grant ample and 
fair compensation — a sum sufficiently large to deter a landlord from evicting his 
tenants — another, perhaps of narrow mind, and one who owed his appointment 
to landlord patronage, would allow no actual compensation whatever. To this 
inequality of justice, and to the risks and expenses which a tenant should under- 
go in order to assert his rights, may be attributed the failure of the Land Act to 
secure to the ' industrious occupier the benefits of his industry,' and to protect 
him in quiet and peaceable possession of his home. 

" MR. BUTT'S BILL. 

" The Land Act having failed to settle the Irish Land Question, a bill was 
introduced into Parliament by the late Mr. Butt, which, it was alleged, would 
' enable occupiers to hold their lands upon tenures sufficiently secure to induce 
them to make improvements.' The advocates of this measure contend that the 
bill, if passed, would ' root the tenant farmers in the soil,' by establishing fixity 
of tenure at fair rents. 

" ' Fixity of tenure at fair rents' is, no doubt, an attractive phrase, but its 
only merit is, that it is attractive. Let us examine it as a proposed solution of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 63 



the Land Question, and first as to 'fair rents.' How is the fairness or unfair- 
ness of rents to be determined ? For an answer we must appeal to part 3 of 
Mr. Butt's bill, wherein provisions are set forth purporting to enable ' the occu- 
piers of land to obtain certain and secure tenures.' Clause 33 of the bill provides 
that the chairman shall give to a tenant a ' declaration of tenancy,' and shall 
therein specify the rent to be paid by him in respect of such premises. Clause 
45 provides that when the landlord and tenant shall not agree upon the rent to 
be so specified, ' the same shall be left to the decision of three arbitrators.' 

" Now, how is a tenant to obtain a 'declaration of tenancy,' specifying the 
rent which he is to pay for his holding ? How is he to obtain the benefit of Mr. 
Butt's measure ? By bringing an action against his landlord ! In the first place, 
he should serve notice of claim upon the landlord, then file this claim, as claims 
are now filed under the Land Act, and when the claim was so filed the case as 
between landlord and tenant would be ripe for hearing. The judge is empow- 
ered to specify in the declaration of tenancy the rent as fixed by the arbitrators. 
But suppose the landlord is dissatisfied with the rent so fixed, he may appeal to 
the assizes, and should the decision of that tribunal be adverse, he may bring the 
suit to the Court of Land Cases Reserved. Nor is that all, for even when a 
declaration of tenancy is obtained the landlord would have the right to apply to 
a court of equity to set aside the said declaration of tenancy on the ground of 
fraud (clause 42). 

" From the foregoing it appears plain that no tenant could derive any bene- 
fit from Mr. Butt's bill unless he had plenty of money to spend in litigation. 
To obtain a declaration of tenancy, even if no appeal existed, a solicitor should 
be employed to prepare notices, a civil engineer to survey the holding, experts 
to value the improvements claimed by the tenant, and witnesses as to the time of 
occupancy should be procured. Then there would be the expenses of the hear- 
ing, solicitors' costs and counsels' fees. Where could the tenant farmer be found 
(unless, perhaps, a rich grazier) who would venture to obtain security of tenure 
at the risk and expense of legal proceedings as above set forth ? Where is the 
small tenant (and there are in Ireland 320,000 holdings valued under £8 a year, 
of which 175,003 are valued under £4.) to whom such proceedings would not 
bring certain ruin ? We feel convinced that of the 600,000 tenant farmers in 
Ireland not more than 100,000 would be able to pay the costs necessary to obtain 
a declaration of tenancy, and even this minority, having secured such declaration 



64 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

of tenancy from the court after tedious and expensive litigation, would reap 
therefrom a very duhious benefit. 

" Suppose a declaration of tenancy obtained, the rent fixed for 2 1 years, 
would the tenant thereby be secured against eviction ? If the rents had been 
fixed in all Ireland three years ago, what would be the position of the tenant 
farmers to-day in face of the fall which has taken place in the value of farm pro- 
duce ? If rents were fixed to-morrow, what guarantee is there that increased 
foreign competition would not cause a still greater fall in the value of land ? 
And yet the advocates of fixity of tenure would tie the tenants of Ireland to 
conditions in regard to rent which would in all probability bring about their ruin. 
We cannot, then, undertake the responsibility of recommending Mr. Butt's bill 
as a settlement of the Land Question, nor can we conceive any permanent 
measure having for its object the adjustment of rents as between landlord and 
tenant which to the tyranny of the rent office would not add the uncertainty 
and peril of the court of law. 

" PROGRAMME FOR CONSIDERATION OF CONFERENCE. 

" Feeling convinced, then, that it is inexpedient to maintain and impossi- 
ble to amend the present relations between landlord and tenant, the question 
presents itself, What measure of land reform do the exigencies of the situation 
demand ? The Land Question in Ireland is the tangled heritage of centuries of 
one-sided class legislation, the successful solution of which will necessitate the 
greatest care and investigation, together with an anxious desire to do right on 
the part of all who approach its consideration. Time will be needed by the 
present House of Commons to inform itself as to the merits of a question which 
is only just commencing to be understood in Ireland and is scarcely understood 
at all in England. 

" PROVISIONAL MEASURE FOR SUSPENSION OF POWER OF EJECTMENT, ETC., FOR 

TWO YEARS. 

" We, therefore, recommend as an ad interim measure, in view of the 
desperate condition of the country, until comprehensive reforms can be per- 
fected, that a bill should be pushed forward with all speed suspending for two 
years ejectments for non-payment of rent, and for overholding, in the case of all 
holdings valued at ^10 a year and under, and suspending for a similar period of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. QQ 



two years in the case of any holding whatsoever the right of recovering a higher 
rent than the poor-law valuation. 

" PROPOSALS FOR PERMANENT REFORM. 

" Next, as to the permanent reform of land tenure in Ireland, we are of 
opinion that the establishment of a peasant proprietary is the only solution of 
the question which will be accepted as final by the country. The Land Act 
created, as between landlord and tenant, an irregular partnership in the owner- 
ship of the land, giving to the former a right to rent for his interest in the soil, 
and to the latter a right to compensation for the loss of his property therein. 
Now, we venture to assert that this system, whereby two opposing classes have 
valuable interests in the same property, must cease to exist. The well-being of 
the State, the preservation of the people, the peace and prosperity of the coun- 
try, demand the dissolution of a partnership which has made financial ruin and 
social chaos the normal condition of Ireland ; and the time has arrived when 
Parliament must decide whether a few non-working men or the great body of 
industrious and wealth-producing tillers of the soil are to own the land. 

" CREATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION FOR IRELAND. 

" To carry out the permanent reform of land tenure referred to, we propose 
the creation of a department or commission of land administration for Ireland. 
This department would be invested with ample powers to deal with all questions 
relating to land in Ireland : 

" i. Where the landlord and tenant of any holding had agreed for the sale 
to the tenant of the said holding, the department would execute the necessary 
conveyance to the tenant, and advance him the whole or part of the purchase- 
money, and upon such advance being made by the department, such holding 
would be deemed to be charged with an annuity of £$ for every ^100 of such 
advance, and so in proportion for any less sums, such annuity to be limited in 
favor of the department, and to be declared to be repayable in the term of 35 
years. 

" 2. Where a tenant tendered to the landlord for the purchase of his hold- 
ing a sum equal to 20 years of the poor-law valuation thereof, the department 
would execute the conveyance of the said holding to the tenant, and would be 
empowered to advance to the tenant the whole or any part of the purchase- 



gg CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

money, the repayment of which would be secured as set forth in the case of 
voluntary sales. 

" 3. The department would be empowered to acquire the ownership of any 
estate upon tendering to the owner thereof a sum equal to 20 years of the poor- 
law valuation of such estate, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal 
to 3! per cent, of the purchase-money thereof. 

" 4. The department or the court having jurisdiction in this matter, would 
be empowered to determine the rights and priorities of the several persons en- 
titled to or having charges upon or otherwise interested in any holding conveyed 
as above mentioned, and would distribute the purchase-money in accordance 
with such rights and priorities, and when any moneys arising from a sale were 
not immediately distributable, the department would have a right to invest the 
said moneys for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto. 

" Provision would be made whereby the Treasury would from time to time 
advance to the department such sums of money as would be required for the 
purchases above mentioned. 

" EASY TRANSFER OF LAND, COMPULSORY REGISTRATION, ETC. 

" To render the proposed change in the tenure of land effectual, it would 
be necessary to make provision for the cheap and simple transfer of immovable 
property. To effect this an organic reform of the law of real property would be 
requisite. The Statute of Uses should be repealed, distinctions between 'legal' 
and ' equitable ' interests abolished, and the law of entail swept away. In short, 
the laws relating to land should be assimilated as closely as possible to the laws 
relating to personal property. The Landed Estates Court would be transferred 
to the Department of Land Administration, its system of procedure cheapened 
and improved. In each county in Ireland there would be established a registry 
office, wherein all owners of land would be compelled to register their titles, 
wherein also would be registered mortgages and all charges and interests whatso- 
ever. Titles so registered (in accordance with rules provided for the purpose) 
would be made indefeasible. 

"With such a system of registration established and legal phraseology in 
conveyancing abolished, a holding of land might be transferred from one owner 
to another as cheaply as a share in a ship or money in the funds, and thus no 
apparent obstacle would stand in the way of the Department of Land Adminis- 




Patrick Egan. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



67 



tration from carrying out the reforms which we have suggested, reforms which, 
it may be hoped, will bring prosperity and contentment to an impoverished and 
distracted country. 

" (Signed), Charles S. Parnell. 

J. J. Louden. 
A. J. Kettle. 
Wm. Kelly. 
Patrick Egan." 
It will be observed that one important name is wanting from the sig- 
natures to this document. It is the name of Michael Davitt. Mr. Davitt be- 
longed to a more advanced section of the Land League, and he thought (and 
subsequent events have justified his judgment) that the terms offered to the 
Irish landlords, in that programme, were too favorable. 

At the public conference, which was called for April 29, 1880, to discuss 
the Land Reform platform, drafted by Mr. Parnell and his friends, Mr. Parnell 
explained a portion of the platform, as follows : 

"Under Mr. Gladstone's Land Act" (that is, the Act of 1870) "tenants 
valued at £10 and under, if disturbed by the act of the landlord, were entitled 
to seven years' rent as compensation." 

That is not strictly so; that was the maximum for which compensation 
could be given, not that they were entitled to it. Then there was an interrup- 
tion by The O'Donoghue, M.P. for Tralee, who asked whether there may be 
an opportunity of moving an amendment to the resolution. Mr. Parnell 
proceeded : 

" Perhaps I might explain to my honorable friend it is perfectly competent 
for any one to move an amendment to this resolution or substitute a resolution 
for it. The Land League invites and desires full discussion. This conference 
has been brought together for the purpose of consultation, and the Land League 
does not desire in assembling the gentlemen composing this conference to tie 
them down to the programme it puts before the conference. It was our duty 
to prepare a programme ; a committee was appointed for that purpose, and 
published the programme so prepared on Monday last. It has now been before 
the country for several days, and we trust and hope that one of the results will 
be that a very full discussion will take place as to the propositions made by the 
committee of the Land League. Now, I was just saying that in the case of 



68 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

tenants valued at ,£io a year and under, the Land Act provided that, if disturbed 
by the act of the landlord, the Chairman may award to such tenant seven years' 
rent in lieu of compensation, in addition to sums for permanent improvements ; 
but if such a tenant be evicted for non-payment of rent, he loses all claim to 
this seven years' compensation for disturbance, and he is entitled to only what- 
ever the Chairman may award him for permanent improvements. Now, Mr. 
Chairman, it is just this class of tenants who are most stricken to the ground 
by the present calamity. Many of them are in a state of starvation and unable 
to pay any rent at all ; and if the landlord is left in full possession of the rights 
which the Land Act of 1870 gives him, and if he proceeds to exact those 
rights, the result will be, in the west of Ireland, during this coming autumn and 
winter, scenes which we all must shudder to look forward to ; and therefore I 
think that one of the first duties of the land reformers should be to place the 
Legislature in possession of the circumstances affecting these 320,000 small 
tenants, to point out their situation, and to place before the Legislature a 
method whereby time may be obtained for a solution of this question, and the 
frightful evils which we anticipate will follow. We don't desire more than an 
act suspending the ample powers which the law at present gives in the case of 
these small tenants. I, myself, think that no Land Act can reach the case, no 
permanent Land Act can reach the case, of the majority. Many of them, per- 
haps the majority, are crowded upon small holdings of poor lands in the west 
of Ireland, holdings on which, in the best of times, they can scarcely earn a 
livelihood and pay the rent. As a matter of fact, they have not been paying 
the rent out of their land ; they have been paying it by working as day-labcrers 
in England and Scotland for other farmers, or by working for larger farmers in 
their own neighborhood. And the question as to how these 320,000 tenant 
farmers are to be dealt with in a permanent enactment is one that requires the 
greatest consideration and care. I say, then, protect these people for a year or 
two, until the Legislature has had time to give that consideration which we may 
assume it is willing to give to their case. Then the second part of the resolu- 
tion deals more particularly with tenants valued at a higher rate than ^"io; it 
suspends for a period of two years the right of recovering a higher rent than 
the poor-law valuation. Now, I think everybody will agree with me that the 
poor-law valuation is at the outset the highest rent any tenant can afford to pay. 
Save under very exceptional circumstances, there are perhaps some of the rich 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. g() 



grazing lands which reach a higher value than the poor-law valuation, but 
speaking as a general rule of holdings valued over £10 throughout Ireland, I 
think everybody will admit, landlords and tenants, that a higher rent than the 
poor-law valuation cannot be paid, under the present circumstances, for such 
holdings. In fact, I believe that many landlords have already throughout Ire- 
land reduced their rents to this valuation, and I am sure we shall not be accused 
of asking anything very exorbitant when we ask that, until Parliament has had 
time to investigate this difficult land question, this class of tenants, who have a 
large property, many of them invested in their holdings, valuable stock and so 
forth, should be protected from those landlords who desire to run counter to 
all dictates of common sense, by desiring to exact a higher rent than the poor- 
law valuation." 

On May 17th, in the same year, perhaps the most important meeting of 
Irish Representatives that was ever convened, if we except the unsavory last 
session of the Irish Parliament, was held in the City Hall, Dublin. The differ- 
ence existed in the fact that the men who took part in the last session of the 
Irish Parliament in 1800 were actors in the iniquitous bill which robbed Ireland 
of her national independence; whereas those who formed the meeting of May 
17, 1880, selected as their leader — the leader of the Irish race — a man whose 
life was to be devoted to the regaining of that Parliament. Mr. Parnell was 
that man, and he was elected by a majority of five over the Whig-Home 
Ruler, Mr. William Shaw. 

As the occasion is of such historical importance, I give the exact vote : 

For Mr. Parnell — John Barry, Wexford ; Joseph G. Biggar, Cavan ; Garret 
M. Byrne, Wexford ; Dr. Andrew Cummins, Roscommon ; W. J. Corbett, 
Wicklow ; John Daly, Cork; Charles Dawson, Carlow ; James L. Finigan, 
Ennis ; H. J. Gill, Westmeath ; Richard Lalor, Queens County ; Edmund 
Leamy, Waterford ; James Leahy, Kildare ; M. M. Marum, Kilkenny ; J. C. 
McCoan, Wicklow ; Justin McCarthy, Longford; T. P. O'Connor, Gal way ; 
Arthur O'Connor, Queens County ; The O'Gorman Mahon, Clare ; James 
O'Kelly, Roscommon ; W. H. O'Shea, Clare ; W. H. O'Sullivan, Limerick ; 
Thomas Sexton, Sligo ; T. D. Sullivan, Westmeath — 23. 

For Shaw — John A. Blake, Waterford ; Maurice Brooks, Dublin ; Philip 
Callan, Louth ; Colonel David Colthurst, Cork ; George Errington, Longford ; 
J. W. Foley, New Ross ; Charles J. Fay, Cavan ; Daniel F. Gabbett, Limerick ; 



70 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

E. D. Gray, Carlow ; D. H. McFarlane, Carlovv ; Sir J. N. McKenna, Youghal ; 
Patrick Martin, Kilkenny; Charles H. Meldon, Kildare ; Sir P. O'Brien, Kings 
County ; Richard Power, Waterford ; P. J. Smyth, Tipperary ; John Smithvvick, 
Kilkenny ; E. J. Synan, Limerick — 18. 

And of the eighteen " Moderate " Home Rulers who voted against Mr. 
Parnell's election on this occasion, only four were re-elected to Parliament by 
the Irish constituencies. 

As elected Chairman of the Irish parliamentary party and leader of the 
Irish people, we shall now have to treat directly with the extraordinary life of 
self-sacrifice and sterling patriotism of Mr. Parnell in his battle for Irish 
autonomy. 




CHAPTER IV. 

The Land Agitation— Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Nation— The sudden change 
of opinion of the Irish Priesthood and Episcopacy— The Land Act of 1881— Coer- 
cion— Gladstone and Parnell — Mr. Parnell arrested— His Historical Speech at 
Wexford. 

JHE first appearance of the political doctrines of the Land League and 
the followers of Mr. Parnell occurred in the House of Commons in 
its opening session after the general election. In the opinion of 
Mr. Shaw and his friends, the existing Ministry was so friendly to Ireland that 
they decided to signify their general adherence to the Government by sitting 
on the same side of the House. But, in the words of Mr. O'Connor : The 
supporters of Mr. Parnell maintained that even between a friendly Liberal 
Ministry and an Irish National party there was an irreconcilable difference on 
the Irish National question and on several others. They held that the only 
hope of a satisfactory solution of the Irish question was that Irish members 
should maintain a position of absolute independence of the English parties; 
that, therefore, the attitude of the Irish Nationalists was one of permanent op- 
position to all English administrations, and that this political attitude should be 
signified by their continuing to keep their seats on the opposition side of the 
House. Subsequent events brought out more clearly the grave issues which 
underlay this apparently trivial action. It meant simply that the party, led by 
Mr. Parnell, would not support any English Ministry ; that they held them- 
selves aloof from every English party, and that they were present in the English 
House of Commons for no purpose of Imperial legislation, but only to watch 
the opportunity when they could benefit Ireland. It was an entirely new de- 
parture, and it discomfited the Government immensely. Thirty-six men were 
pledged to follow this course — now there are eighty-six — and, by their con- 
sistent and unrelenting attitude it was calculated, and justly, that in short party 
majorities the life-lease of the Governments of England rested in the voting 
power of this band of patriotic Irishmen. They were not with or of any Eng- 

(71) 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



lish political party : the calculations of majority which Liberal and Tory 
" whips " were accustomed to make with such peculiar accuracy were now im- 
possible, and it soon became the custom that instead of patronizing the Irish 
members, Mr. Parnell and his followers were fawned upon and courted, 
inasmuch as that they practically held in their hands the balance of power. 

Upon the reading of the Queen's Speech at this initial session of the 
Parnellite party, it was found that although she dwelt at some length upon the 
condition of Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and South Africa, not one word was 
there in it about the Irish Land question. Mr. Parnell immediately summoned 
his associates to meet him at the rooms in King Street, Westminster ; and here 
the first amendment to a " Queen's Speech," of its kind, was prepared by a 
united Irish party. Probably not one of the thirty-six men who attended this 
meeting, excepting Parnell and Biggar, had the faintest idea of what an im- 
portant event in the history of the two countries was being then enacted. For 
that matter, no man of any politics could tell the grave significance of this first 
act of the new Irish leader. 

As we proceed it will be made plain. This was the amendment : 

"And to humbly assure Her Majesty that the important and pressing ques- 
tion of the occupiers and cultivators of the land in Ireland deserves the most 
serious and immediate attention of Her Majesty's Government, with a view to 
the introduction of such legislation as will secure to these classes the legitimate 
fruits of their industry." 

The effect of the announcement of this amendment upon the House was 
not discernible. At this time the forces behind Ireland's New Party were not 
a measurable quantity, and the friends of the Government positively chuckled 
with delight over the " refreshing impudence of Parnell." They did not know 
the man. Mr. Parnell declared in his first speech of the session that he "trem- 
bled to think of what the consequences might be if the Government gave the 
aid of their soldiers and their police to the landlords, who were determined to 
take advantage of the widespread distress in Ireland, and push on evictions at a 
disastrous rate." This statement did not then have much effect ; but it is posi- 
tively amusing to note how soon was his power as the leader of a fearless Irish 
party recognized. 

The Liberal ministers and the followers of Mr. Parnell were at that stage 
in which it was yet undecided whether doubting affection would end in closer 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER 73 



bonds or in permanent estrangement ; but, meantime, Mr. Parnell and his 
friends contemplated a second move. The great object at that time was to stay 
the hand of the landlord, made omnipotent over the tenantry by the failure of the 
crops : and to meet this emergency the Irish party brought in the Suspension of 
Evictions Bill. This measure, like Mr. Parnell's speech, received comparatively 
little attention, and was allowed to proceed on its course without any " blocking " 
motion. The truth was, that the members of the new Parliament had not yet 
settled down to their work, had not learned the arts and machinery of parliament- 
ary warfare, and Mr. Warton had not shown his portentous shape on the par- 
liamentary horizon. The result was, that the second reading of the Suspension 
of Evictions Bill came on at two o'clock one fine morning, to the horror and 
surprise of the Treasury bench. For the first time the Irish party was in strength ; 
nearly forty of them were present, and they completely filled two of the benches 
below the gangway, and anybody who looked at their faces could see that they; 
had braced themselves for a struggle, and really meant business. This certainly 
was the impression made upon Mr. Gladstone. He looked up from the paper 
on which he was writing his nightly report of parliamentary proceedings to the 
Queen, with a gaze first of pained amazement, and then of pathetic appeal to 
the serried and resolute ranks opposite him. But the Irishmen, who had to 
think of hundreds of thousands of other faces that looked to their inner minds 
with hungry hope from cabin and field, had their advantage, were determined to 
hold to it, and declared that the discussion of the bill must go on. The Premier 
yielded to the inevitable ; made the important announcement that the Govern-, 
ment themselves would consider the subject raised by Mr. Parnell's measure, 
and so the Irish Land question, which but a few days before had been scouted 
out of court, which had never been mentioned at the first Cabinet Council, of 
whose existence the Queen's Speech knew absolutely nothing, had already, with- 
in a couple of weeks after the meeting of Parliament, been taken up by the Gov- 
ernment as one of the chief and primary questions of the session. And the starv- 
ing tenants, just emerging from famine, might hope that the landlords would 
not be allowed to work unchecked their wicked will. This, in fact, was the first 
parliamentary victory that the Land League gained. 

And that initial victory of the Parnellite party was destined as the precursor 
of more political — constitutionally political — victories in the British House of 
Commons than were ever before obtained by even majorities. It is indeed 



74 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

strange how great a power can be wielded by a small united party, unpledged to 
any of the great opposing elements of a legislature. And here I shall take the 
liberty of, once again, giving Mr. O'Connor's estimate of Mr. Parnell as the 
leader of this small but united party. He says : " The nature of Mr. Parnell 
impels him to drive, in political matters, the hardest of hard bargains within his 
power ; his grip of a political advantage for his countrymen is as relentless as the 
grip of death." It was this trait in Mr. Parnell's character that made the Irish 
party such a remarkable power in the government of England, and we shall soon 
see how the determination of that one Irishman, backed by as determined fol- 
lowers, affected the destinies of the British Empire. His policy was, in the 
main, a policy of expedience, and, as a matter of fact, it was the only policy that 
an Irish leader could adopt with hope of any success in the English Parliament. 
Truths and grievances — no matter how dramatically portrayed — did not affect 
the parties of England ; but when a solid thirty-six members of Parliament 
blocked the business of the British Empire it became expedient to listen to them. 

Mr. Parnell again and again reiterated to his followers that the amount of 
ministerial concession could only be measured by the strength and determination 
of the Irish people — organized. For instance, he said, at New Ross: "I be- 
lieve I have always expressed the opinion that the question will be settled when 
it is perfectly ripe for settlement throughout the length and breadth of the coun- 
try, and it is far more important for us to make the question ripe than to knock 
our heads against each other, discussing plans as to how it may be best settled 
before it is ripe." 

At Longford he spoke in the same vein, and this was always in connection 
with Mr. Gladstone's proposed Land Bill, in which he did not believe. He said 
at Longford : 

" The extreme limit of our demands, when the time comes, must be meas- 
ured, as I have said repeatedly in other places already, by the results of your 
exertions this winter (1880), and you may rely upon it that, whatever your ex- 
ertions entitle you to claim, we will press for with vigor, determination, and 
success. The nature of the settlement of the Land question depends entirely 
upon yourselves. The Government have no notion yet how they are going to 
settle it, and they won't make up their minds until they see what you are going 
to do." 

This was, all through his career as leader, Mr. Parnell's advice to the people 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 75 



of Ireland. He did not say / will do this, that, or the other thing for you ; he 
preached the doctrine of self-reliance, of organization, of unity and determina- 
tion, and he said, " Whatever your exertions entitle you to claim, we (the Irish 
parliamentary party) will press for with vigor, determination, and success." 
And then, in explanation of what it was that he as leader was ready to accept as 
the outcome of this unity and determination among the people, he said, at New 
Ross, on September 25, 1880 : 

" We seek as Irish Nationalists for a settlement of the Land question which 
shall be permanent — which shall forever put an end to the war of classes which 
unhappily has existed in this country, .... a war which supplies, in the words 
of the resolution, the strongest inducement to the Irish landlords to uphold the 
system of English misrule which has placed these landlords in Ireland. And 
looking forward to the future of our country, we wish to avoid all elements of 
antagonism between classes. I am willing to have a struggle between classes in 
Ireland — a struggle that should be short, sharp, and decisive — once for all ; but 
I am not willing that this struggle should be perpetuated at intervals, when 
these periodic revaluations of the holdings of the tenants would come under the 
system of what is called ' fixity of tenure at valued rents.' " 

And he continued : 

" Now, then, is the time for the Irish tenantry to show their determination 
— to show the Government of England that they will be satisfied with nothing 
less than the ownership of the land of Ireland. 

" Talk of fixity of tenure at fair rents, I think that the Irish tenants should 
be able to look forward to a time when all rents would cease — when they would 
have homes of their own, without the necessity of making annual payments for 
them. And I see no difficulty in arriving at such a solution, and in arriving at 
it in this way : by the payment of a fair rent, and a fair and fixed rent not liable 
to recurrent and perhaps near periods of revision, but by the payment of a fair 
rent for the space of, say, thirty-five years, after which time there would be nothing 
further to pay, and in the meantime the tenant would have fixity of tenure. 

" Let the arbitration be made now, and you would find that the magic of 
property, which turns sand into gold, would enable the then safe, and the now 
miserable tenant of the most barren and unproductive holdings in Ireland to 
bring it into such a state of culture as to put him beyond the reach of famine 
after two or even three bad seasons." 



76 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

From these quotations from his speeches at that time, it will readily be seen 
that he persistently advocated a peasant proprietary — or in other words, the ex- 
termination of landlordism — as a final settlement of the land question. 

In the meantime the Castle authorities were becoming alarmed at the tri- 
umphal progress of Mr. Parnell and ol the Land movement. Toward the 
beginning of October the cry for Coercion had " swollen to a tempest," but it 
decreased for a little time because of two remarkable speeches of Mr. John Bright 
and Mr. Chamberlain. 

" I saw (said Mr. Bright) the statement the other day that about ioo Irish 
landlords, equal nearly to the number of the Irish members, had assembled in 
Dublin and discussed the state of things, and they had nothing but their old' 
remedy — force; the English Government, armed police, increased military assist- 
ance and protection, and it might be measures of restriction and coercion which 
they were anxious to urge upon the Government. The question for us to ask 
ourselves is, Is there any remedy for this state of things ? Force is no remedy. 
There are times when it may be necessary, and when its employment may be 
absolutely unavoidable, but for my part I should rather regard, and rather dis- 
cuss, measures of relief as measures of remedy, than measures of force, whose 
influence is only temporary, and in the long run I believe is disastrous." 

But finally the Ministry acceded to the suggestions of Mr. Forster, the 
Chief Secretary, and on November 2, 1880, an information was filed at the suit 
of the Right Hon. Hugh Law, Attorney-General, against Mr. Parnell and four 
of his parliamentary colleagues, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Sexton, Mr. John 
Dillon, and Mr. Biggar; and also against Mr. Patrick Egan and Mr. Thomas 
Brennan. There were nineteen counts in the indictment against the traversers. 
The main charges being — conspiring to incite tenants not to pay their rents; de- 
terring tenants from buying land from which other tenants had been evicted ; 
conspiring for the purpose of injuring landlords, and forming combinations for 
the purpose of carrying out these unlawful ends. 

As says Mr. O'Connor, " This was the proceeding of the Liberal Govern- 
ment ! There is scarcely one of the charges which was not the glory instead of 
the shame of Mr. Parnell and his fellow-traversers. Mr. Parnell had found the 
people face to face with famine and groaning under the oppression of centuries. 
He had brought them to such assertion of their rights, to such a potent com- 
bination, that instead of being swept away, as in all previous occurrences, by 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 77 



wholesale hunger and plague and eviction, and thereafter reduced to deeper 
wretchedness and more hopeless slavery, not one man among them died from 
hunger or from disaster, and that, rising up from their misery and impotence, 
they gradually reached the position of practical omnipotence over their oppres- 
sors. The events and calamities which seemed to drive the tenantry back 
into the doom of hunger and of servitude had brought to them a new birth of 
political hope and power ; and an hour of apparently darkest misery had been 
changed into the dawn of a new and a better day. A man of any other nation- 
ality who had accomplished such things — if he had been an Italian or a Pole; 
still more, at this epoch, if he had been a Bulgarian or a Montenegrin — would 
have taken an imperishable place in the adoration of Englishmen ; and his re- 
ward, being an Irishman, was that a Liberal administration dragged him through 
the mire of a criminal court. The trial was opened by a startling episode. With 
their usual mistake in regarding things in Ireland as necessarily the same as in 
England, because called by the same names, the English public were and are 
accustomed to look upon an Irish judge as raised above the passions of political 
partisanship. They were strangely shocked in the course of the preliminary pro- 
ceedings of the trial to read a judgment of the Chief Justice of the Queen's 
Bench in which the trial was to take place — a judgment in which the traversers 
were denounced with vehement passion. The times had been so changed since 
the elevation of a man like Judge Keogh to the Bench, that the Lord Chief 
Justice found that even the English people could not stomach such conduct, and 
he retired at the opening of the trial. 

" The trial was one of the solemn mockeries of the time. It was known by 
the Crown that no impartial jury would convict the saviour of the nation 
of treason for the nation ; and after a trial extending over twenty days, 
the jury were discharged without agreeing to a verdict, ten, according to 
universal rumor, being in favor of acquittal and two for conviction." 

Parliament reassembled on January 6, 1881, and there was considerable 
speculation as to what would be the fate of the Coercion proposals of the Gov- 
ernment. In the Queen's Speech the allusions to Coercion were unusually strong, 
while the references to the coming Land Bill were very weak. " Attempts 
upon life," she said, " have not grown in the same proportions as other offenses, 
but .... an extended system of terror had been established which had para- 
lyzed almost alike the exercise of private rights and the performance of civil 



78 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

duties." As a matter of fact the main offense was that the organization of the 
Irish farmers had been made so perfect that the landlords found it impossible 
any longer to get tenants to pay for the privilege of paying rack-rents. 

In endeavoring to shield or defend the Government from the charge of im- 
petuosity in forcing a coercion bill through Parliament, Mr. Gladstone said : 
" Perhaps it may be said I am proving too much, and I am showing that we are 
coming too soon to make this demand. When that charge is made, we shallbe 
quite prepared to meet it, and to argue the contrary." But this promise was 
never fulfilled. In the meantime, Mr. Parnell was formulating a scheme to 
thwart the designs of the Government. His instructions to the Irish members 
were that they should speak as long as they could in order to postpone, as long 
as possible, the coercive intentions of the Ministry. He himself began the ob- 
struction by proposing : " That the peace and tranquillity of Ireland cannot be 
promoted by suspending any of the constitutional rights of the Irish people." 
Justin McCarthy followed this amendment to the Queen's Speech by proposing 
the following: " Humbly to pray Her Majesty to refrain from using the naval, 
military, and constabulary forces of the Crown in enforcing ejectments for non- 
payment of rent in Ireland until the measures proposed to be submitted to Her 
Majesty with regard to the ownership of land in Ireland have been decided upon 
by Parliament." Mr. Parnell's plan was to so clog the machinery of Parliament 
that it would listen to him and to his party. It was a most unique as well as 
original mode of procedure in the English House of Commons ; but the con- 
ception of the scheme was most excellent, as we shall see. 

The instructions to the Irish members were that they should all speak, and 
speak as long as they could, and this instruction was strictly obeyed. Excep- 
tion was made, of course, in the cases of those who had to propose subse- 
quent amendments. They had to remain silent, for if they spoke, their right 
of proposing an amendment would be forfeited. The Government and the 
Opposition meantime had passed their words of command also ; it was an 
order to maintain absolute silence, and the order was observed with unbroken 
obedience. The result was that, throughout the long hours of every 
evening and every night, the Irish members had to go on addressing empty 
benches, or benches that, if filled, were noisy, insolent, and provocative ; that 
each member had to talk when he had something and when he had 
nothing to say ; that each had to go through a certain length of time, weary or 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 79 



fresh, in good spirits or in bad. These long days and nights seemed for the 
time to make little impress upon those who took part in them, for the conjoint 
effect of excitement and anger kept them up. Then nearly all were young in 
parliamentary, and the most prominent figures in actual, years ; but Nature's 
Nemesis, though slow, is sure, and many of these members have since learned 
that the parliamentary pace, if it is not the pace which kills, is that which rapidly 
ages even robust physiques and shatters even stout nerves. 

This brought the debate on the Queen's Speech up to Thursday, January 
20th. By this time the aspect of affairs had undergone a considerable change. 
The exasperation caused by this prolonged resistance created a similar exaspera- 
tion outside the House of Commons. There was gradually rising one of those 
tempests of popular passion in England which sweep down party ties. The 
Radicals grew fewer and fainter in their opposition, the two English parties 
practically coalesced, and the House was united against the little Irish phalanx. 
The latter, on their part, exhausted, but still angry and determined, resolved to 
fight on; and they, too, were backed by the rising temper of their own countrymen. 
The Land League grew daily in power and in resources ; the subscriptions from 
America rose to an amount that a short time before would have been considered 
fabulous ; and on January 13th the treasurer was able to announce that during the 
week then past there had been received from various sources no less a sum than 
,£4,050. Eviction became daily more impossible, and, though all the forces of 
the Crown were placed at the disposal of the landlords, the decree frequently 
had to remain unfulfilled in the presence of crowds of peasants armed with 
pitchforks, scythes, and pike-heads, and ready to perish in defense of their home- 
steads. These various circumstances were also aggravated by the daily contests 
at question-time between Mr. Forster and the Irish representatives. Every act 
of repression to which he resorted lent fuel to the flame, and from this period 
forward he took up an ultra-Tory attitude. He admitted no case of exceptional 
hardship, defended the police through thick and thin, and, in fact, adopted the 
policy of repression pure and simple. 

On Monday, January 24th, Mr. Forster introduced the first notorious Coer- 
cion Bill. The facts (?) which he used upon this occasion were chiefly furnished 
to him by that un-Irish Irishman, the late Under-Secretary, Mr. Thomas Burke 
— who was murdered in Phoenix Park a few years later. As said Mr. O'Con- 
nor, who was an actor in the defense against this illegal proposal : " The speech 



30 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

of Mr. Forster himself is the best testimony of the madness of the time. Its 
equivocations and its admissions alike prove that men must have been tempo- 
rarily insane to have accepted such an indictment against a nation as satisfac- 
tory." Here are some of the statements made by Mr. Forster in that memorable 
speech of his : 

" I have given a return of the total number of agrarian outrages in Ire- 
land in 1880, which shows that the total number was 2,590. We have a sepa- 
ration of the returns of agrarian from other crimes in Ireland since the year 
1844, but not before, and the highest year during that period was the first year 
of the great famine — namely, 1845. In that year the outrages numbered 1,920. 
Consequently, last year they were 35 per cent, more than they have ever before 
been recorded to be" (Hansard, vol. cclvii., p. 1209). 

This statement Mr. Forster had to swallow bodily ; he had to admit that 
the number, 2,590, was a falsehood ; the number of agrarian outrages was after- 
ward admitted by him to be only 1,253 — the balance of 1,337 being threaten- 
ing letters. And he then went on to make the following extraordinary state- 
ment, or, as Mr. O'Connor says, "a grossly — it may be said, a gigantically — 
false representation of the state of affairs." 

It is entirely untrue to declare that the year 1880 was more criminal than 
any year from 1844. It would be far more correct to say that the year 1880 
was a year startlingly free from crime in comparison with several of the years 
from 1844. The criminal character of a year should assuredly be tested, not so 
much by the number of its crimes, as by their character. A year that had a 
hundred cases of petty larceny and no murder, would certainly be less criminal 
than a year that had fifty-two crimes, of which fifty were petty larceny and two 
were wilful murder, though there was a difference of forty-eight between the 
criminal totals of the one year and the other. A test of the criminality of these 
different years would be a comparison of such serious crimes as homicides, 
whether murder or manslaughter. Let us apply this test to 1880 and other 
years, and this is what we find : 

Homicides Described as Agrarian. 



Year. 


Homicides. 


Year. 


Homicides. 


Year. 


Homicides 


1844 . 


18 


1847 . 


16 


1869 . 


lO 


1845 • 


18 


1849 • 


15 


1879 . 


IO 


1846 . 


16 


1850 . 

1851 . 


18 
12 


1880 . 


8 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



81 



It will be seen from this table that, in serious agrarian crime, the year 1880 
bore a most favorable contrast, not merely with many years since 1844, but also 
with the very year which preceded it. 

Let us try another form of comparison between the criminality of 1880 and 
that of preceding years. The distinction made between agrarian and other out- 
rages would seem to have been very lax in the early years of the statistical rec- 
ords. For instance, in the year 1847 the total outrages in Ireland are set down 
as 2,986, and of these but 620 are placed to the credit of agrarian outrages. 
This must, of course, be inaccurate ; for 1847, as has been seen, was a year of 
agrarian upheaval, and, instead of the proportion of crime between agrarian and 
non-agrarian being fairly represented by 620 on the one side, and the balance of 
the total of 2,986 on the other, it would seem far more likely that the greater 
number of the 2,986 crimes were agrarian crimes — the crimes of starving and 
desperate peasants fighting for their patch of land and their meals of potatoes. 
In any case, let us now compare the total crime of 1880 with that of other 

years : 

Total of 
Outrages. 

14,908 

10,639 

9.H4 
5,609 



This table will show a startling difference between the crime of 1880 and 
that of several of the years by which it was preceded. 

Finally, let us compare the total of murders of all kinds in 1880 with those 
of preceding years : 



Year. 


Total of 
Outrages. 


Year. 


1844 • 


6,327 


1849 


1845 


8,088 


1850 


1846 


12,374 


1851 


1847 


20,986 


1880 


1848 


14,080 





Year. 
1844 

1845 
1846 
1847 
1848 
1849 
1850 



Homicides. 
146 

139 
170 
212 
171 
203 
139 



Year. 

851 

852 

853 
870 

871 



Homicides. 

157 
I40 
II 9 

77 
7i 
69 



82 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

But the strongest evidence of the comparative freedom from serious crime 
of 1880 in comparison with other years is found in the speech of Mr. Forster 
himself. It has already been seen that this immunity from serious crime was 
acknowledged in the Queen's Speech. In the same way Mr. Forster not only 
admitted it, but seemed to boast of it, and, by some strange form of reason- 
ing, to regard it as the strongest argument in favor of his position, that the year 
1880 was horribly and exceptionally criminal. 

" Some honorable members," he said, " have said that after all there have 
been but few cases of murder, or attempt at murder" — and when this statement 
was received, as was natural, with cheers from the Irish members, the Chief 
Secretary made the reply — " but they were not necessary "; and it was here that, 
for the first time, John Bright showed signs of weakness or vacillation in his 
advocacy of the cause of Ireland. He said : "A coercion act becomes a tyr- 
anny in the hands of tyrants ; but in the hands of men who are liberal and just 
it may be a law of protection and of great mercy to Ireland." But an idea 
of the temper of the ministry can be learned from the fact that Mr. Forster put 
into Mr. Gladstone's hand the copy of a speech — delivered by a man named 
Power — which the Prime Minister quoted as having been delivered by Mr. 
Parnell. Mr. Parnell several times endeavored to correct Mr. Gladstone as he 
proceeded ; but it was useless, for the speaker, in every instance, called the Irish 
leader to order. This sitting of the House occupied forty-one hours. At the 
close of it, Mr. Justin McCarthy, the vice-chairman of the Irish party, rose to 
protest against the indecent haste of the Government in pressing upon Parlia- 
ment this coercion bill. The Speaker took no notice of him, and both of them 
remained standing, each of them addressing the House, but the remarks of both 
were absolutely unintelligible to the members because of the storm of inter- 
ruption which greeted Mr. Parrfell's first lieutenant. 

It was one of the most contemptible incidents in the annals of the English 
Parliament ; but it was to be followed by many much more disgraceful, for the 
Irish party had now a leader who knew not fear, and under whose guidance the 
government of England would have been rendered impossible if they did not 
listen to the demands of Mr. Parnell's followers. On this particular occasion 
Mr. Parnell was not present in the House. But after the peculiar incident of 
the entire Parnellite party leaving the House as a protest against the conspic- 
uously autocratic action of the Speaker, in reply to a telegram from Mr. Healy, 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. §3 



who was then his secretary, Mr. Parnell entered the conference-room — to which 
the party had retired — amidst the ringing cheers of his followers. One of those 
who composed that meeting told me that " upon that night he looked like a 
man inspired." One of the members proposed that the entire party retire from 
the House, "pending the result of a consultation with their constituents"; but 
Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar did not believe in the policy of withdrawal from 
the battlefield, and during the following few days occurred one of the stormiest 
and most curious of scenes that ever took place within the walls of Westminster. 
And in order that the incident shall be authentically described, I shall give it 
in the words of one of the actors in that memorable parliamentary battle — Mr. 
T. P. O'Connor. He thus describes it : 

"The Wednesday immediately following the close of the forty-one hours' 
sitting was again wasted in motions for adjournment. Just before the sitting on 
Thursday there came the stunning report that Mr. Davitt had been arrested. Mr. 
Davitt had now been more than three years out of prison. He had already, as the 
reader knows, passed through the hideous tortures of seven years' confinement. 
The Coercion Bill was passed soon after this, and though the expectation was 
general that he might be placed under restraint under the new legislation, no- 
body suspected that the Government would have proceeded to lengths so great 
and so shameful as to send back to penal servitude one of the leaders of the 
agitation. The news deeply affected Mr. Parnell and the other Irish members. 
When the House met, however, there was no indication of the coming storm. 
Mr. Gladstone was asked for a day to discuss a motion condemnatory of the 
action of the Speaker, but his refusal to do so did not appear to excite any very 
strong emotion. Nor was there any resentment even at the announcement that 
he was still determined not to make known the character of the Land Bill. Mr. 
Parnell rose from his seat in his usual tranquil fashion, and asked, in a tone of 
apparently no great concern, whether it was true that Mr. Davitt had been ar- 
rested. 'Yes, sir!' was the curt reply of Sir William Harcourt, delivered with 
much emphasis and pomp. Before he could utter another word there burst 
from the Liberal benches, and from the benches occupied by the Radicals more 
vehemently than from any other, a tempest of cheers that would have formed a 
fitting welcome to a mighty victor in the field or the accomplishment of a mo- 
mentous popular reform. The Conservatives joined in the cheer to some ex- 
tent, but their tone was comparatively mild. The Home Secretary then said 



84 CHARLES STEWART PARKELL. 

that the conduct of Mr. Davitt was not such as to justify his retention of his 
ticket-of-leave. Again the House rang with vociferous cheering. Mr. Parnell, 
with an appearance of great calmness, asked what conditions of his ticket-of-leave 
Mr. Davitt had contravened. Sir William Harcourt sat still, and made no 
attempt to answer the question. The Irish party burst into exclamations of 
intense anger, but the Home Secretary, folding his arms across his breast after 
his usual fashion, remained silent. The Speaker, apparently with a desire to 
put an end to the incident, called upon Mr. Gladstone to rise and propose the 
urgency resolutions. 

" But the scene was not thus to terminate. The Prime Minister had hardly 
uttered a word when Mr. Dillon rose. The Speaker called upon Mr. Dillon 
to sit down, and that gentleman shouted above the tumult of ' Order! order!' 
and ' Name ! name !' the words, ' I rise to a point of order.' It is an invariable 
rule of every deliberative assembly in the world that a member has a right to 
rise at any moment to a point of order ; but the House of Commons had long 
passed the time when such distinctions would be observed, and the Speaker res- 
olutely refused to allow Mr. Dillon to proceed. Mr. Dillon thereupon folded 
his arms, and he and the Speaker remained standing for some minutes at the 
same time. At last the Speaker was understood to name Mr. Dillon, though 
the decree could not be heard above the wild din. Mr. Gladstone immediately 
proposed the suspension of Mr. Dillon. The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan endeav- 
ored to raise a point of order, but was not listened to, and the House divided : 
Ayes, 395 ; Noes, 33. Mr. Dillon was then called upon to withdraw, but he 
refused to do so, and a noisy scene took place. Then the Sergeant-at-Arms 
invited Mr. Dillon to withdraw, and when the latter still refused, the Sergeant 
again advanced with the principal doorkeeper and a number of messengers, 
placed his hand on Mr. Dillon's shoulder, and requested him to obey the order 
of the Speaker. ' If you employ force I must yield,' said Mr. Dillon, and then 
withdrew. 

" Mr. Sullivan then attempted to raise the question whether the Speaker 
had acted legally or not. He pointed out the right of every member to rise to 
a point of order, and then suggested the contrast between the treatment given 
to Mr. Bradlaugh when he refused to withdraw, and that meted out to Mr. Dil- 
lon. Mr. Sullivan found the greatest difficulty in proceeding with his speech, 
for he was interrupted at every point. Finally, however, he succeeded in put- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. g5 



ting his case. The Speaker then surprised the Irish members by giving a 
wholly different reason to that which was generally accepted for the suspension 
of Mr. Dillon. He adroitly slurred over Mr. Dillon's right to rise to a point 
of order, and based the suspension on the fact that Mr. Dillon had remained 
standing at the same time as himself. This, of course, added fuel to the flame ; 
and the Irish members, now convinced that there was no chance of any justice 
being given them, determined to mark the occasion by an incident that could 
not be forgotten. The Prime Minister had scarcely again risen when Mr. Par- 
nell stood up at the same time, and made the motion which the Prime Min- 
ister himself had made not many months before in regard to Mr. O'Donnell — 
namely, that the right honorable gentleman be no longer heard. The Speaker, 
however, refused to accept the motion, and threatened Mr. Parnell with sus- 
pension in case he continued. Again Mr. Gladstone got up, and resumed the 
sentence which had so frequently been interrupted. Mr. Parnell again rose. 
The Speaker declared that the conduct of the member for Cork was wilful and 
deliberate obstruction, and named him. When the division took place in the 
case of Mr. Dillon, the Irish members had not yet made up their minds as to 
what was the proper course to adopt ; but by the time that Mr. Parnell was 
named, their tactics had been resolved upon. When the division upon Mr. 
Parnell's suspension was called, they refused to quit their seats. The division 
went on without them, and the House presented a curious spectacle with the 
Speaker left alone with the Irish party. The deserted and tranquil appearance 
of the House might have encouraged the illusion that the storm of passion had 
subsided and given place to perfect quiet. The Speaker warned the Irish mem- 
bers of the consequences that might result upon what they were doing; Mr. 
Sullivan declared that they contested the legality of the proceeding. This 
exchange of language between the Speaker and the Parnellites was mild and 
courteous. The division over, Mr. Parnell was ordered to withdraw ; but he 
refused to go unless compelled by force, and again the Sergeant-at-Arms and the 
messengers came forward and touched his shoulder. The Irish leader slowly 
descended the gangway, bowed to the Speaker, and walked out of the House 
with head erect and amid the ringing cheers of his supporters. Once more Mr. 
Gladstone resumed the unfortunate sentence, that, as he himself said, had been 
bisected and trisected already; but again he was not allowed to proceed, for 
Mr. Finigan arose and proposed the same motion that Mr. Parnell had pro- 



86 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

posed, that the Prime Minister be no longer heard. Once more a division was 
taken, and once more the Irish members refused to leave their places. The 
tellers and clerks took down the names of the contumacious members, and after 
the withdrawal of Mr. Finigan the Speaker read out their names and suspended 
them all. The names were — Messrs. Barry, Biggar, Byrne, Corbet, Daly, Daw- 
son, Gill, Gray, Healy, Lalor, Leamy, Leahy, Justin McCarthy, McCoan, 
Marum, Merge, Nelson, Arthur O'Connor, T. P. O'Connor, The O'Donoghue, 
The O'Gorman Mahon, W. H. O'Sullivan, O'Connor Power, Redmond, Sex- 
ton, Smithwick, A. M. Sullivan, and T. D. Sullivan. 

" By this time the passion of the House was to some extent exhausted, and 
there was even some return of good humor, but Mr. Gladstone remained grave, 
and proposed the suspension of the twenty-eight members with an air of painful 
preoccupation. Then the division was taken, and once more the Irish members 
refused to leave their places. The Speaker then called upon the different mem- 
bers in their turns to withdraw, and each in turn, and in practically identical lan- 
guage, refused to do so unless compelled by force, and protested against the 
legality of the whole proceedings. But even in this somewhat monotonous pro- 
ceeding there was room left for a variety of incident. Some of the members 
were content with being touched on the shoulder by the Sergeant-at-Arms ; 
while others, more obstinate, insisted on a show of considerable force. The 
most prominent among the latter was Mr. Metge, a young Protestant landlord 
like Mr. Parnell, who evidently shared his leader's intensity of political feeling. 
He stubbornly remained in his seat until Captain Gosset had called four of the 
attendants of the House to his aid. There was, naturally enough, a laugh when 
the Rev. Mr. Nelson, a gentleman with white hair and of seventy winters, con- 
fronted the Sergeant, who looked about the same age, and the spectacle of the 
one old gentleman attempting to resist the other was certainly somewhat ludi- 
crous. Force, in the shape of the Sergeant, was a much more benign-looking 
individual, than meek submission as personified by the belligerent pastor. The 
appearance of the attendants who came into the House in Indian file to assist in 
the work of expulsion was not impressive, being irresistibly suggestive of the 
depressed and perfunctory air of the theatrical ' super.' The protests of the ex- 
pelled members varied slightly, and there was also a difference in the manner of 
their exit. Some hurried away, while others, following the example of Mr. 
Parnell, bowed with gravity and solemnity to the Chair. The demeanor of the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. §7 



House varied from moment to moment — sometimes it laughed, sometimes it 
cheered ; finally, it settled down into allowing the incident to pass off in grave 
silence. Another amusing incident that momentarily lit up the dolorous scene 
occurred when the Sergeant-at-Arms approached The O'Gorman Mahon. It 
was notorious that the two veterans had spent many a day of their hot youth 
together, and it was indeed a curious sight, the one aged man having to super- 
intend the expulsion of the other. 

"The absence of the Irish members allowed the Prime Minister to pass his 
new urgency rules without any difficulty, and thus, whatever indignities they had 
received, were avenged by the sight of the oldest and formerly the freest assem- 
bly in the world absolutely surrendering the whole course of its proceedings in- 
to the hands of the Speaker." 

This Coercion Act passed its third reading on February 25, 1881. Imme- 
diately a second one was proposed ; but so stern was the opposition to it from 
Mr. Parnell and his followers, that it did not pass its third reading until March 
nth. And now Ireland was under the full swing of two as drastic coercion 
laws as were ever passed for a civilized people. The people of Ireland chafed at 
this re-enactment of the laws of the Penal times ; and probably, through shame 
for the assistance which he had given in passing Forster's Coercion bills through 
Parliament, Mr. Gladstone on April 7, 1881, brought forward his much-talked- 
of " Land Act." Or perhaps it was as a kind of bribe to the Irish Party, that 
this bill was now introduced; for, as Mr. O'Connor says: " Parliament had de- 
stroyed the liberties of Ireland, and Ireland had killed the vigor of Parliament." It 
was therefore possible, nay quite probable, that the " Grand Old Man " bethought 
him then to pacify those whom he sneered at before, by offering this bill for their 
acceptance. And, although I shall afterward have to notice this matter more 
fully, I shall anticipate the connections between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone, 
in their later developments, here. 

Mr. Parnell never gave nor even signified allegiance to, or co-operation 
with, the ex- Premier. He simply used him as a means toward the ends he had 
in view. He was playing with a lion, and in order that that lion should be ren- 
dered affable, he appeared, from time to time — as the occasion best suited the 
plans of the Irish National Party — to act in concert with him (Mr. Gladstone). 
And in this role Mr. Parnell was peculiarly strategic. 

Here is an example of Mr. Parnell's action concerning Mr. Gladstone's self- 



gy CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

adulation — in which he is such an expert master. It occurred concerning the 
action of the Land League upon the passing of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill of 
1 88 1. On October 7th, the Prime Minister delivered an address at Leeds, Eng- 
land, in which he said : 

" The very thing that is most necessary for the Land Leaguers to do is to 
intercept the progress of the Land Act. And how do they set about it ? Mr. 
Parnell with his myrmidons around him, in his Land League meetings in Ire- 
land, has instructed the people of Ireland that they are not to go into a court 
which the Government of this country has established, in order to do justice. If 
Mr. Parnell, under the name of test cases, carries before the court moderate and 
fair rents, of which there are many in Ireland, the court will reject the applica- 
tion ; and, when the court has rejected the application, Mr. Parnell and his train 
will tell the Irish Nation that they have been betrayed, that the court is worth- 
less, and that the Land Act ought to meet with their unequivocal repudiation. 
And so he will play his game and gain his object, if the people of Ireland should 
listen to his fatal doctrines. Because, gentlemen, you know, as well as I do, that 
the Parliament of this country is not going to overturn the principles of public 
right and public order ; and I think you also know, what I fully believe, that 
the people of this country, in any such question relating to the government of a 
portion of the Queen's territory, weak as they may be, if their case is unjust, in 

a just case are invincible These opinions are called forth by the grave 

state of facts. I do not give them to you as anything more than opinions ; but 
they are opinions sustained by references to words and to actions. They all have 
regard to this great impending crisis, in which we depend on the good sense of 
people, and in which we are determined that no force, and no fear of force, and 
no fear of ruin through force shall, so far as we are concerned — and it is in our 
power to decide the question — prevent the Irish people from having the full and 
free benefit of the Land Act." 

Two days later, Mr. Parnell replied to this extraordinary speech. It was at 
Wexford ; where he addressed a meeting of nearly 10,000 people. Upon this 
occasion he made some most remarkable and prophetic statements. So import- 
ant was this speech, in outlining his policy, that I think it quite admissible to 
quote it in its entirety, as it appeared in the Dublin Freeman's Journal, on the 
following day: 

" People of the City and County of Wexford: — I am proud to see 




Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



that your county has not forgotten her traditions, but that you are prepared to- 
day, as you always were, to return a fitting answer to threats and intimidation, 
even if it should become necessary to use those means which were used in 1798 
by an unscrupulous government, — means which failed then and which, please 
God, will fail again if they are tried again. You, in this county, have arrived 
at the commencement of the second year of existence of this great Land League 
movement. You have gained something by your exertions during the last 
twelve months, but I am here to-day to tell you that you have gained but a 
fraction of that to which you are justly entitled. And the Irishman who thinks 
that he can now throw away his arms, just as Grattan disbanded the Volunteers 
in 1782, will find to his sorrow and destruction, when too late, that he has placed 
himself in the power of a perfidious, cruel, unrelenting English enemy. You 
have had an opportunity recently, many of you, no doubt, of studying the utter- 
ances of a very great man, a very great orator, a person who recently desired to 
impress the world with a great opinion of his philanthropy and hatred of oppres- 
sion, but who stands to-day the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most un- 
rivalled slanderer of the Irish nation that ever undertook that task. I refer to 
William Ewart Gladstone and his unscrupulous and dishonest speech the day 
before yesterday. Not content with maligning you, he maligns John Dillon. 
He endeavors to misrepresent the Young Ireland party of 1848. No misrepre- 
sentation is too patent, too low, or too mean for him to stoop to, and it is a good 
sign that this masquerading knight-errant, this pretended champion of the liberties 
of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be obliged to throw 
off the mask to-day and to stand revealed as the man who, by his own utterances, 
is prepared to carry fire and sword into your homesteads unless you humble and 
abase yourselves before him and before the landlords of this country. But I 
have forgotten I had said that he had maligned everybody. Oh, no ; he has a 
good word for one or two people. He says that the late Mr. Isaac Butt was a 
most amiable man and a true patriot. When we in Ireland were following Isaac 
Butt into the lobbies, endeavoring to pass the very act which William Ewart 
Gladstone passed, by having stolen the idea from Isaac Butt, William Ewart 
Gladstone and his ex-government officials were following Sir Stafford Northcote 
and Benjamin Disraeli into the other lobby. No man was good in Ireland un- 
til he was dead and unable to do anything more for his country. In the opin- 
ion of an English statesman, no man is srood in Ireland until he is buried and 



90 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

unable to strike a blow for Ireland, and perhaps the day may come when I may 
get a good word from English statesmen as a moderate man when I am dead 
and buried. 

" When Mr. Gladstone a little lower down accuses us of preaching the doc- 
trine of public plunder, and of proclaiming a new gospel of plunder, and, further 
down, of the promulgation of a gospel of sheer plunder — (A voice, ' That is his 
own doctrine.') I would be obliged to my friend in the crowd if he would 
leave me to make the speech, and not be anticipating me. When the peo- 
ple talk of public plunder they should first ask themselves and recall to mind 
who were the first public plunderers in Ireland. The land of Ireland has been 
confiscated three times over by the men whose descendants Mr. Gladstone is 
supporting in the fruits of their plunder by his bayonets and his buckshot. When 
we speak about plunder we are entitled to ask who were the first of the plun- 
derers. Oh, yes ; but we can say a little more than that too ; we can say, or at 
all events if we don't say it others will say it, that the doctrine of public plun- 
der is only a question of degree. Who was it that first sanctioned this doc- 
trine of public plunder will be asked by some persons. I am proceeding in 
the demand that the improvements of the tenants — and their predecessors in 
title — shall be theirs, no matter how long ago they may have been made. I am 
proceeding upon the lines of an amendment in the Land Act of 1881, which was 
introduced by Mr. Healy, framed by Mr. Gladstone's attorney-general for Ire- 
land, and sanctioned by Mr. Gladstone, his whole cabinet, the House of Com- 
mons, and the House of Lords. If your rents are reduced at all under this Land 
Act, it will be because this Land Act requires that for twenty years back the im- 
provements of the tenant or his predecessors in title shall not be valued by the 
landlord for rent, and I say that it is a question of degree if you extend that 
limit of twenty years, within which period the improvements of the tenants have 
been protected by the legislature, to that period, no matter how long, within 
which those improvements have been made. 

" Why should the landlord be entitled to compensation for improvements 
that may have been made one hundred years ago, any more than he should be 
entitled to improvements made twenty years ago ? And I say that it is this 
doctrine of public plunder. It is a question of degree, and William Ewart 
Gladstone, who has shown himself more capable of eating his own words, and 
better able to recede from principles and declarations which he has laid down 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 91 



with just as much fervOr as he made the speech the other evening, will, before 
long, if he lives long enough, introduce a bill into the House 'of Commons to 
extend this very principle of public plunder which he has sanctioned by his act 
of 1881, and to thoroughly protect the interests of tenants and their predeces- 
sors in title for improvements they have made ; so that if we are to go into this 
question, the utmost that Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party will be able to 
make out of it will be to find that there are some persons very much better en- 
titled to call him a little robber than he is to call me a big one. But I was for- 
getting a point ; he has a good word for Mr. Shaw. He has discovered that 
there are only four or five honest Irishmen in the country, and one of these is 
Mr. Shaw. He blames me for not having disapproved of what he calls the dyna- 
mite policy. Well, I am not aware that Mr. Shaw has repudiated the dynamite 
policy either ; but I'll tell you what Mr. Shaw said, and you must bear in mind 
that, in addition to speaking well of him as an honest Irishman, Mr. Gladstone 
also offered him a situation as one of the land commissioners. Mr. Shaw did 
not repudiate the dynamite policy any more than I did ; but I'll tell you what 
he did eighteen months ago in the county of Cork. He said that his blood 
boiled whenever he saw a process-server, and that he never met one without feel- 
ing inclined to take the linch-pin out of his car. Now, gentlemen, if I said that 
to you to-day Mr. Gladstone would have me in Kilmainham before three weeks 
were out. Nay, more, if I had ever spoken anything like that Mr. Gladstone 
would have had me in Kilmainham long ago." 

Referring to Mr. Gladstone's charge that "he (Mr. Parnell) was afraid, 
now that the Land Act was passed, lest the people of England by their long-sus- 
tained efforts should win the hearts of the whole Irish nation," Mr. Parnell said : 

" Long-sustained efforts in what ? Was it in evicting the 2,000 tenants 
who have been evicted since the 1st of January last ? Was it in putting the 
two hundred honorable and brave men in Kilmainham and the other jails of the 
country ? Was it in issuing a police circular of a more infamous character than 
any which has ever been devised by any foreign despot ? Was it in the sending 
hundreds of thousands of rounds of ball cartridge to his Bashi-Bazouks through- 
out the country ? Was it in sharpening the bayonets of the latest issue to the 
Royal Irish Constabulary ? And if it was not all these sustained efforts which 
Mr. Gladstone has taken up nobly and well from his predecessors in the title of 
misgoverning Ireland, I should like to know what were the efforts of which 



<j2 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

William Ewart Gladstone talks when he speaks of those sustained efforts which 
he is making for the people of Ireland. He charges us with having refused to 
vote for the second reading of his Land Act ; he charges us with having used 
every effort to disparage, to discredit, and, if we could, to destroy his land bill; 
he points to our refusal to compromise our position by voting on the second 
reading as his proof, and then he goes on to say that on every subsequent occa- 
sion, on the two subsequent occasions when that bill was really in danger, I and 
the Irish party rescued Gladstone and his cabinet by our thirty-six votes from 
destruction and defeat. And then in the close of his speech he admits our 
whole position and contention. In one last despairing wail he says that when 
the Government is expected to preserve the peace it has no moral force behind 
it. The Government has no moral force behind it in Ireland. The whole Irish 
people are against them. They have to depend for their support on the self- 
interest of a very small minority of the people of this country, and therefore 
they have no moral force behind them. Mr. Gladstone, in those few short 
words, admits that the English Government has failed in Ireland ; he admits 
the contention that Grattan and the volunteers of '82 fought for ; he admits the 
contention that the men of '98 lost their lives for ; he admits the contention 
that O'Connell argued for ; he admits the contention that the men of '48 staked 
their all for ; he admits the contention that the men of '65, after a long period 
of depression and of apparent death of all national life, in Ireland, cheerfully 
faced the dungeon and the horrors of penal servitude for, and admits the con- 
tention that to-day you in your overpowering multitudes have re-established, 
and, please God, will bring to a successful and final issue, namely, that Eng- 
land's mission in Ireland has been a failure, and that Irishmen have established 
their right to govern Ireland by laws made by themselves for themselves on 
Irish soil, and he winds up with a threat. This man, who has no moral force 
behind him, winds up with a threat : ' No fear of force and no fear of ruin 
through force shall, so far as we are concerned — and it is in our power to decide 
the question — prevent the Irish people from having the full and free benefit of 
the Land Act.' I say it is not in his power to trample on the aspirations and 
the rights of the Irish people with no moral force behind him. These are very 
brave words that he uses, but it strikes me that they have a ring about them 
like the whistle of a schoolboy on his way through a churchyard at night to 
keep up his courage. He would have you to believe that he is not afraid of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 93 



you because he has disarmed you, because he has attempted to disorganize you, 
because he knows that the Irish nation is to-day disarmed, so far as physical 
weapons go. But he does not hold this kind of language with the Boers. 
What did he do at the commencement of the session ? He said something of 
this kind. He said he was going to put them down ; but as soon as he had 
discovered that they were able to shoot straighter than his own soldiers, he 
allowed these few men to put himself and his Government down, and though 
he has attempted to regain some of his lost position in the Transvaal by the 
subsequent chicanery of diplomatic negotiations, yet that sturdy and small peo- 
ple in the distant Transvaal have seen through Mr. William Ewart Gladstone, 
and they have told him again for a second time that they will not have their 
liberties filched from them ; and, as the result, I believe we shall see that Mr. 
Gladstone will again yield to the people of the Transvaal. And I trust we shall 
see, as the result of this great movement, that just as Mr. Gladstone, by the act 
of 1 88 1, has eaten all his bold words, has departed from all his former declared 
principles, so we shall see that these brave words of this English prime minister 
will be scattered as chaff before the united and advancing determination of the 
Irish people to regain for themselves their lost land and their lost legislative 
independence." 

I shall point directly to one or two of Mr. Parnell's most powerful thrusts 
in this famous speech. He says : " This man (Gladstone), who has no moral 
force behind him, winds up with a threat : ' No fear of force and no fear of 
ruin through force shall, so far as we are concerned — and it is in our power to 
decide the question — prevent the Irish people from having the full and free ben- 
efit of the Land Act.' I say it is not in his power to trample on the aspirations 
and the rights of the Irish people." Again, speaking of Mr. Gladstone's well- 
known perspicacity and love of self-adulation, he says : " No misrepresentation 
is too patent, too low, or too mean for him to stoop to He stands to- 
day the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most unrivalled slanderer of the 
Irish nation that ever undertook the task." And again : " William Ewart Glad- 
stone has shown himself more capable of eating his own words and better able 
to recede from principles and declarations which he has just laid down " — I 
shall take the liberty of finishing this incomplete sentence : — than any living 
politician. 

On the Thursday following this speech, Mr. Parnell was arrested in his 



94 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



room at Morrisson's Hotel, Dublin. Here is his own account of how it occurred : 
" Intending to proceed to Naas this morning, I ordered, before retiring to bed 
on Wednesday night, that I should be called at half-past eight o'clock. When 
the man came to my bedroom to awaken me, he told me that two gentlemen 
were waiting below who wanted to see me. I told him to ask their names and 
business. Having gone out, he came back in a few minutes and said that one 
was the superintendent of police and the other was a policeman. I told him to 
say that I would be dressed in half an hour and would see them then. He went 
away, but came back again to tell me that he had been down-stairs to see the 
gentlemen and had told them I was not stopping at that hotel. He then 
said that I should get out through the back part of the house, and not allow 
them to catch me. I told him I would not do that even if it were possible, 
because the police authorities would be sure to have every way most closely 
watched. He went down again, and this time showed the detectives up to my 
bedroom." 

The Freeman s Journal of October 14, 1881, describes the arrest in 
this way : 

" In Foster Place there was a force of one hundred policemen held in readi- 
ness in case of any emergency, Mr. Mallon, when he entered the bedroom, found 
Mr. C. S. Parnell in the act of dressing, and immediately presented him with two 
warrants. He did not state their purport, but Mr. Parnell understood the situa- 
tion without any intimation. It is not true to state that he exhibited surprise or 
that he looked puzzled. The documents were presented to him with gentleman- 
ly courtesy by Mr. Mallon, and the honorable gentleman who was about to be 
arrested received them with perfect calmness and deliberation. He had had private 
advices from England regarding the Cabinet Council, and was well aware that 
the Government meditated some coup a" Mat. 

"Two copies of the warrants had also been sent to the Kingsbridge Termi- 
nus, to be served on Mr. Parnell in case he should go to Sallins by an early train. 
Superintendent Mallon expressed some anxiety lest a crowd should collect and 
interfere with the arrest, and he requested Mr. Parnell to come away as quickly 
as possible. Mr. Parnell responded to his anxiety. A cab was called, and the 
two detectives with the honorable prisoner drove away. When the party reached 
the Bank of Ireland, at which but a fortnight previously Mr. Parnell had directed 
the attention of many thousands to its former memories and future prospects, 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 95 



five or six metropolitan police, evidently by preconcerted arrangement, jumped 
upon two outside cars and drove in front of the party. On reaching the quays 
at the foot of Parliament Street, a number of horse police joined the procession 
at the rear. In this order the four vehicles drove to Kilmainham. This strange 
procession passed along the thoroughfares without creating any remarkable no- 
tice. A few people did stop to look at it on part of the route, and then pursued 
the vehicles. But their curiosity was probably aroused by the presence of ' the 
force ' rather than by any knowledge that after a short lull the Coercion Act was 
again being applied to the dlite of the League. They stopped their chase after 
going a few perches, arid at half-past nine o'clock Mr. Parnell appeared in front 
of the dark portals of Kilmainham." 

Immediately following the arrest of Mr. Parnell, Ireland was thrown into a 
condition of profound grief. His incarceration was looked upon as a national 
calamity, and in many of the towns the shutters were put on the windows as they 
are in the time of death. To again quote Mr. O'Connor: "The country was 
swept by a passion of anger and grief, the more bitter because it had to be sup- 
pressed." Troops were poured into the country and Dublin was given over for 
two days to the police. 

The scenes of brutality which ensued I shall describe from an anti-Irish 
newspaper, which, in its issue for October 22d. says: 

" The conduct of the police was such as to appear almost incredible to all 

who had not been to witness it After every charge they made, men, 

amongst them respectable citizens, were left lying in the streets, blood pouring 
from the wounds they received on the head from the bdtons of the police, while 
others were covered with severe bruises from the kicks and blows of clenched 
fists, delivered with all the strength that powerful men could exert." 

And then this same organ ( The Weekly Irish Times) continues : 

"The police drew their bdtons, and the scene which followed beggars de- 
scription. Charging headlong into the people, the constables struck right and 
left, and men and women fell under their blows. No quarter was given. The 
roadway was strewn with the bodies of the people. From the Ballast Office to 
the Bridge, and from the Bridge to Sackville Street, the charge was continued 
with fury. Women fled shrieking, and their cries rendered even more painful 
the scene of barbarity which was being enacted. All was confusion, and nought 
could be seen but the police mercilessly batoning the people. Some few of the 



96 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

people threw stones, of which fact the broken gas-lamps bear testimony ; but, 
with this exception, no resistance was offered. Gentlemen and respectable work- 
ingmen, returning homewards from theatres or the houses of friends, fell victims 
to the attack, and as an incident of the conduct of the police it may be men- 
tioned that, besides numerous others, more than a dozen students of Trinity Col- 
lege and a militia officer — unoffending passers-by — were knocked down and 
kicked, and two postal telegraph messengers engaged in carrying telegrams, were 
barbarously assailed. When the people were felled they were kicked on the 
ground, and when they again rose, they were again knocked down by any con- 
stable who met them." 

A few days afterward, Mr. Sexton, Mr. John Dillon, and Mr. James 
O'Kelly were arrested. Warrants had also been issued for the arrest of Mr. 
Biggar, Mr. Timothy Healy, and Mr. Arthur O'Connor; but Mr. Parnell de- 
cided that it would be unwise to have too many of his lieutenants locked 
up, and he gave orders from his prison, that these three gentlemen should re- 
main in England, and thus avoid arrest. Then followed a most peculiar move 
on the part of the Government. Everybody, or nearly everybody, officially con- 
nected with the League in any part of the country was arrested and thrown into 
prison without trial. The idea of the Government was " to destroy the move- 
ment by the removal of its active members." But even this was ineffectual, and 
finally the Land League was suppressed. 

The leaders, now in jail, were confronted with a situation in which modera- 
tion was no longer possible. Resort was had to the final weapon, and, after 
various consultations, the " No-Rent" manifesto was issued. 




View of Houses of Parliament, London. 




CHAPTER V. 

The Consequences of Forster's Coercion Act — The Arrears Bill prepared in Kilmain- 
ham Prison by Mr. Parnell — Ladies Arrested— Evictions in 1881— The Kilmainham 
Treaty— Deposition of Chief Secretary Forster— The Phcenix Park Tragedy— Cap- 
tain O'Shea's Speech on the Arrears Bill. 

NE of the strange features in the condition of Ireland — following the 
arrest of Mr. Parnell and the other leaders — at this time was the 
advanced percentage of crime. The country was at bay, and was 
driven from constitutional to open movement. Without the restraining influ- 
ence of their leaders the weaker and more hot-headed of the people resented the 
action of the Government with violence, and, as a result, crime and outrages 
increased rapidly. For instance, in 1880 there were eight murders in Ireland, 
and twenty-five cases of firing at with intent to kill. In 1881 there were seven- 
teen murders, five homicides, and sixty-six cases of firing at with intent to kill. 
From January to June of 1882 there were fifteen cases of murder and forty of 
firing at with intent to kill. 

These figures prove the impotence of coercive measures against a country 
like Ireland. But there was another element in the result of this Coercion Act. 
The number of evictions rose abnormally — proving without doubt that this act 
was particularly framed in the interests of the landlords. In 1879 tne number 
of ejectments was 1,348 ; in 1880, 10,457; an d in 1881 it rose to 17,341. This, 
then, was the result which, " against any force and despite even the ruin of his 
party" in the English Parliament, Mr. Gladstone forced upon the people of 
Ireland. 

Not more than a year before, Mr. Gladstone demanded from Parliament 
the Disturbance Bill, upon the plea that "the eviction of 15,000 people was an 
event so horrible as to shame the humanity of every man." But, with his usual 
sang-froid upon such matters, he did not take the trouble to contemplate the 
aggravated condition of the tenantry of Ireland — aggravated only because of 
the bills which, by his influence in Parliament, had become measures of law. It 

(97) 



98 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

is not for me here to paint the scenes of cruelty which occurred under this law. 
Women in childbirth and old and dying people — men, women, and children 
were cast out of their homes upon the roadside. Many of them died, as did 
they in the time of which Bishop Nulty speaks, and which I have recorded. 
But I shall give one instance of the horrors of that eviction crusade which came 
to my own personal knowledge. On the outskirts of the village of Dunderrow — 
about three miles from Kinsale — there is a little house facing the churchyard, 
two fields beyond. I shall describe this more particularly so as to render the 
narration more intelligible to those who know the district. This house, which 
still exists, is exactly opposite to the last house in Dunderrow at the western 
end, and at the corner of the " Bandon Road " and of the laneway leading to 
Horsehill. In 1869 and 1870 — during my vacations — I remember well going out 
to Horsehill to watch the women and men gather the hay and press it into 
bales for shipment to St. Nazaire for the French army. Then Mrs. Bowen 
and her children were comparatively comfortable and happy in the cottage by 
the roadside. She eked out a living for them from a little potato-patch beside 
the house, and from the sale of eggs and poultry and a pig or two. But 1881 
came, and a grasping landlord, taking advantage of the Coercion Act, or rather 
of the illegal powers conferred upon the landlords by that act, drove her from 
her little holding. 

It is, to my mind, one of the most appalling records of the period. For 
days the poor woman and her children were houseless and starving ; but as soon 
as the " evictors " or " emergency men " had gone, some of the villagers gave 
them food and shelter. But it was too late to benefit poor Mrs. Bowen. Her 
mind became unstrung, and I well remember the unfortunate woman, after her 
children were placed in the Kinsale Industrial School, crying {keening) around 
the old cottage for her husband and children. Finally the case became so pit- 
iable that even the landlord's heart was touched, and he allowed her to re-enter 
the house ; but this only doubled her delirium ; for her children were no longer 
there, and in a short time she died in the insane ward of the Kinsale workhouse. 
The entire rental of Mrs. Bowen's holding was £2 ($10) per annum; even 
before the eviction her mind had been slightly unhinged by her husband's 
death ; but the landlord did not care for this — the rent was over-due and he 
evicted her. A year before he would not dare to do this in the face of the peo- 
ple, but Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster rendered it possible and safe, and hence 



■ 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. (jj) 



the death of this poor woman in a ward for the insane in a pauper institu- 
tion. 

Huts were erected in many instances for the evicted by the Ladies' Land 
League, which laudable association kept the ball rolling whilst the leaders were 
in jail. But even the ladies were not now exempt from the persecution of Mr. 
Gladstone's Government. Clifford Lloyd — that most notorious tool of Fors- 
ter's — who was now commander-in-chief of the Coercion Act, imprisoned Miss 
McCormack, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Reynolds for six months each, and Miss 
Kirk for three months, for " refusing to give bail for their good behavior." Mark 
you, that " refusing to give bail for their good behavior " meant refusal to cease 
helping the starving evicted, or the families of those who had been imprisoned. 

In Hansard (vol. cclxix., p. 1404) the following " passage-at-arms " con- 
cerning this disgraceful incident occurs, and it will be noticeable that the dia- 
logue happened between two Englishmen — one Chief Secretary for Ireland and 
the other the editor of a London newspaper : 

" Mr. Labouchere asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
land whether it is true that Mrs. Moore, Miss Kirk, and Miss O'Connor, who 
have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment under an ancient act for 
alleged intimidation, by different stipendiary magistrates, are kept in solitude 
for about twenty-three hours out of twenty -four ; and whether the time has 
arrived when, in the interests of the peace and tranquillity of Ireland, these 
ladies should be restored to their friends ? 

" Mr. Trevelyan : Sir, the ladies named in this question have been commit- 
ted to prison in default of finding bail, and are treated in exact conformity with 
the prison rules; and, according to the rules for 'bailed prisoners,' they are 
allowed two hours for exercise daily, and are therefore in their cells for twenty- 
two out of twenty-four hours. They can at once return to their friends on 
tendering the requisite sureties." 

So that, although the men imprisoned under the Coercion Law were al- 
lowed to mingle with each other during six hours of each day, those ladies were 
kept in solitary confinement for no other offense than that they had pity for 
the poor of Ireland and for the families of Ireland's imprisoned patriots — but 
patriot is not the correct expression to use here ; for many of those who were 
imprisoned under Mr. Forster's act were "suspects" for other reasons than that 
they were nationalists. 



100 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

A curious anomaly happened at this time. It is one of the strangest 
events in all history. Mr. Parnell, the leader of the Irish race, was in prison ; 
but he was at the same time preparing a bill which it was his determination — 
inside or outside prison — to force the Government, which had imprisoned him, 
to pass through Parliament for the amelioration of the condition of the Irish 
people. It was the Arrears Bill, and it was adopted by the Government in the 
succeeding year. That portion of his bill which related to the leaseholders was 
not accepted, or passed, by Parliament until 1887, and by the delay the measure 
was deprived of much of its efficacy. 

It was through the notorious Captain O'Shea that the Kilmainham treaty 
was negotiated ; but before dealing directly with that famous treaty — a treaty 
which consisted chiefly in that a political prisoner (Mr. Parnell) demanded 
terms from the most powerful Government in the world, upon which he would 
consent to release — I shall give some statistics of the evictions in 1881, follow- 
ing the Coercion Act, and show the savage ferocity with which that act was 
put into effect. 

Here are some of the incidents of that Coercion Act — apart from the im- 
prisonment of over one thousand of Ireland's representative men. I quote the 
facts from Hansard, vol. cclxviii., at pages varying from 993 to 1266, and from 
the same authority in volume cclxvii., from page 25 to page 1285. A boy named 
Lee was brought before the magistrates for whistling. Thomas Wall, another 
young boy, was arrested by a constable for the same offense, and was, in addi- 
tion, charged with using abusive language. The " abusive language " consisted 
in whistling " Harvey Duff," — a song which was composed in satire of the police. 
The accusing constable was asked: " Do you consider that whistling 'Harvey 
Duff ' is using abusive language ? " And the constable promptly replied : " Yes, 
I do, and I swear it is." On the 16th of April a policeman in Waterford rushed 
into a shop where a woman was engaged in reading " United Ireland," threw her 
down, and kneeling on her stomach, searched her in an indecent manner. In 
Cappamore, a constable attacked a young girl named Burke, because she was 
singing " Harvey Duff." He drew his sword or bayonet and inflicted a wound. 
And here is another silly case, which is also taken from Hansard : 

"Was it true, asked Mr. Healy with his characteristically grim humor, that 
Daniel O'Sullivan, aged nine or ten years, 'who appeared before the magistrates 
crying,' had been prosecuted by the magistrates, under the Whiteboy Act, for 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. JQ^ 



having, at two o'clock in the day, by carrying a lighted torch in the public streets 
at Millstreet, promoted a certain unlawful meeting contrary to the statute made 
and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown 
and dignity ? Was it not true that the child's offense really consisted in head- 
ing a procession of young fellows who were after tilling the farm of a woman 
whose husband had died ? 

" Mr. Forster found fault with the levity of the question, and then proceeded 
to state the serious facts of the case. The youth Daniel O'Sullivan was the 
leader of a party of boys from twelve to seventeen years of age ; O'Sullivan him- 
self was about twelve. When their procession was stopped the boys dispersed, 
but they reassembled at the instigation of grown-up persons. 

" The police made domiciliary visits by day and by night into the rooms 
alike of women and of men. They broke into meetings ; they stood outside 
doors and took the names of all persons entering into even the house of a priest 
to take steps for relieving the tenantry. They tore down a placard in Tipperary 
calling upon the people to vote for the popular candidates for poor-law guardians ; 
and at a meeting of the Drogheda Corporation, the sub-inspector of police in- 
terposed in the proceedings with the declaration that he would not allow the 
word Coercion to be used." 

The police had the most absolute power vested in them that was ever 
given to the officials of an autocrat — and, as will be seen, from what I have 
written, they used it mercilessly. At the 17,341 evictions, which occurred that 
year — 1881 — they proved how brutal they could be ; and in the list of sick and dy- 
ing who, by the landlord's orders, supported by the Government, were thrown 
out of their homes to die (many of them died during the eviction), we have a 
most appalling record of the inhumanity of the Royal Irish Constabulary of that 
period. 

The " Kilmainham Treaty" was the "most abject and complete surrender 
ever made by the powerful Government of a great State to the imprisoned leader 
of a small, poor, and unarmed nation." All the forces of England had been 
pitted against Mr. Parnell, and he had hurled them back and beaten the empire. 
Just about this time Mr. Henry Labouchere said: 

" The only lawlessness in Ireland is that of which Gladstone is guilty. Kil- 
mainham jail is full of prisoners, not one of whom could be convicted of any 
crime known to the laws of England before an impartial jury. And no impar- 



102 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

tial court would permit the case to go to the jury. No pretense of any intention 
is made to try them for any crime known to the laws of England. And the only 
object of urging a declaration of martial law is that they may be convicted and 
punished for acts which are not crimes." 

Honest public opinion was now directly against the action of the Govern- 
ment, and the power of Mr. Parnell had to be recognized. No better proof of 
this can be shown than the terms of the so-called Kilmainham Treaty. The very 
first thing admitted by the Government was the utter failure of Coercion, and 
this admission involved the deposition of, or resignation of those who were re- 
sponsible for Coercion. Accordingly, Lord Cooper, the Lord Lieutenant, and 
Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary, resigned from the ministry. Another of the terms 
which Mr. Parnell insisted upon, was a guarantee from the Government that Co- 
ercion should not be again enforced. 

The first few days after his release from prison, he was overwhelmed with 
congratulations, and, even by his enemies, " he was recognized to be — as beyond 
all question he was, at that moment — the most potent political force in the Brit- 
ish Empire." Upon his entrance into the House of Commons, Mr. Forster was 
explaining his resignation ; but the Right Hon. gentleman had to stop his 
speech amidst' the wild cheering that greeted the Irish leader. And then the 
late Chief Secretary used the following remarkable words: 

" A surrender is bad, but a compromise or arrangement is worse. I think 
we may remember what a Tudor king said to a great Irishman in former times : 
' If all Ireland cannot govern the Earl of Kildare, then let the Earl of Kildare 
govern Ireland.' The king thought it was better that the Earl of Kildare should 
govern Ireland than that there should be an arrangement between the Earl of 
Kildare and his. representative. In like manner if all England cannot govern 
the hon. member for Cork, then let us acknowledge that he is the greatest power 
in Ireland to-day." 

It was a time of complete triumph for the representatives of Ireland. The 
number of evictions rapidly fell ; crime in Ireland almost entirely ceased, and 
even the London Times, in an editorial on March 17, 1882, said : 

" The recurrence of St. Patrick's Day, with its traditional celebration, its 
toasts and its old memories, reminds us that the Irishman of tale and of history 

is nowhere to be found The Irishman is becoming like the Englishman, 

that is, the Englishman of the dull, morose, self-satisfied sort — the man who sees 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1Q3 



everything and everybody from his own point of view, and pursues his object 
with a dogged indifference to all reasons, interests, feelings, and beliefs. The 
Irishman, like the Englishman, is now righteous in his own eyes, and his right- 
eousness is to hold money and land, and to have the use of it as long as he can. 

.... The Irishman has become more a thing of earth He is taking 

root." 

And then it proceeds : 

" Of course this is what his friends most desire ; but it will be with the usual 
consequences. No one ever planted himself deeper in the earth without be- 
coming more earthy The ancient slave was a very droll fellow, and a great 

relief to the high-toned Greek and Roman civilization. He lost his native charm, 

and did not always acquire another when he became free So long as 

the Irishman taught himself after his own fashion, and managed his affairs gen- 
erally after his own fashion, he successfully developed the most genial and fertile 
part of his own nature, and was far more witty, humorous, poetic, and social 
than the poor English clodhopper, artisan, or tradesman. But he did not suc- 
ceed in acquiring a good position or his rightful share in the products of the 
soil He has actually become a citizen of the world and a very 'cute fel- 
low. He has played his cards well, and is making a golden harvest. He has 
beaten a legion of landlords, dowagers, and encumbrances of all sorts, out of 
the field, and driven them into workhouses. He has baffled the greatest of 
legislatures, and outflanked the largest of British armies in getting what he 
thinks his due. Had all this wonderful advance been made at the cost of some 
other country, England would have been the first to offer chaplets, testimonials, 
and ovations to the band of patriots who had achieved it. As the sufferers in 
the material sense are chiefly of English extraction, we cannot help a little 
soreness. Yet reason compels us to admit that the Irish have dared and done 
as they never did before. They are welcome to that praise. But they have 
lost, and it is a loss we all feel. Paddy has got his wish — he is changed into a 
landowner." 

But this calm sea of Irish triumph was soon to be lashed into a tempest of 
disaster. Two days after Mr. Parnell's re-entrance into the House of Com- 
mons on May 6th, the news arrived that Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. 
Thomas Burke had been assassinated in Phoenix Park. But before entering 
into an account of the storm of sorrow and passion which these murders evoked 



104 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

in Ireland as well as in England, I think it not inopportune to quote in full a 
letter which, on the ioth of May, was addressed to the editor of the London 
Standard by Mr. Michael Davitt. He said : 

" Sir — The admirable temper that has marked your language since the hor- 
rible occurrence of Saturday last convinces me that any reply I may make to 
the questions you address to me in your leader of this morning will receive a 
fair hearing. Believing this, I would feel that I was neglecting a duty to my- 
self and an opportunity of vindicating, to the best of my ability, the Land 
Movement in Ireland, if I permitted your remarks of to-day to pass unan- 
swered. For the opinion you express of the sincerity of my condemnation of 
the murders that have excited your just indignation, and for your belief that 
neither Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, nor myself would be guilty of an alliance with 
assassins, I am thankful, as it is in marked contrast with the expressions of some 
of your contemporaries." 

Then he speaks of his having just come from prison, not knowing what 
has taken place meanwhile, and he was, as most of the public were, unaware of 
the various denunciations of crime that had taken place. 

" I came out of Portland prison at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon 
last. I had been confined in solitude for fifteen months, without having from 
the hour of my reception to that of my release seen a newspaper or even re- 
ceived a communication that did not pass through the hands of the governor. 
Yet in face of these facts, which cannot be unknown to those who understand 
the rigorous discipline of a convict prison, you ask me to come forward and 
make a clean breast of information that would throw light upon the atrocity of 
last Saturday. You must have overlooked the situation in which I had been 
placed from the 3d of February, 188 1, to the afternoon of the day of Lord Caven- 
dish's murder, when you implied that I, in common with Messrs. Parnell and 
Dillon, must possess information that would enable the assassins to be tracked. 
I am assured by those gentlemen — though -no such assurance is needed by any 
one who knows them — that they have no such information. They could not 
therefore lend any more assistance in bringing the assassins to justice than that 
given in the manifesto issued in our names and placarded throughout the length 
and breadth of Ireland, so that our people should see that we placed the mur- 
derers of Lord Cavendish in their true position, as assassins of the people's 
cause, who had forfeited all claim to shelter or sympathy, and whose capture 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. JQ5 



alone could remove the stain which their crime has left upon the character of 
Ireland. 

" You next call upon my friends and myself to employ our recovered lib- 
erty to give the world solid and unanswerable guarantees of the loathing with 
which we regard all forms of outrage, by making a fresh pilgrimage through the 
country, and to never desist from denouncing assassination until these hideous 
crimes are exorcised from the land. I agree with you, sir, that such a pilgrimage 
ought to be made even now. Had it been made before, it is my firm belief 
that the terrible tragedy of the Phoenix Park, and many another tragedy, 
which, though it has not attracted so much attention, has wrung heartstrings as 
bitterly, would never have occurred. Why have there not been such pilgrim- 
ages ? Let the facts answer, so far, at least, as I am concerned. From the 
first initiation of the Land League I warned the Irish people against outrages 
as the greatest danger of the moment. 

"When I went to America in May, 1880, wherever I spoke from New 
York to San Francisco, I did my best to lay the demon of revenge which bitter 
memories of eviction evoke in the hearts of exiled millions. On the day of 
my arrival in Ireland from my last lecturing tour in America in November, 
1880, in an interview published in all the Irish newspapers, I denounced vio- 
lence and outrage in the strongest terms I could command. On the following 
day I did the same thing from the platform, and pushing on the very pilgrimage 
you now propose to me, I spoke in the same way in all the four provinces of 
Ireland. In addition to this, I issued instructions of similar tenor to the organ- 
izers of the Land League, and I drew up, printed, and distributed circulars 
pointing out to the people the inevitable consequences of revenge being allowed 
to supplant the moral forces which alone could win their social rights, and in 
the name of the Land League called upon its branches throughout the country 
to deal with the outrage frenzy as the one paramount danger which threatens 
the existence of the movement with destruction, the hopes of our peasantry with 
annihilation, and the character of our people with the stigma of assassina- 
tion." 

Then he proceeds : 

"These are the facts. In verification I appeal to the reports of the Irish 
Press, of the American Press, and of the Government shorthand writers. There 
is another fact. Ere I had completed the seventieth day of my pilgrimage I was 



105 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

arrested, and since then until three o'clock last Saturday afternoon, a period of 
fifteen months, I have been buried in Portland prison. 

" Now, sir, I have answered your questions ; let me put a question to you. 
Supposing that I, or any one else, were to start on the pilgrimage you propose, 
and that after we had gone so far, news were to come to you that we had been 
beaten into silence with the bludgeon, or stricken down with the bullet, or cut 
to pieces by the knives of assassins, what would you say ? Would you not say 
that we had been silenced by those who wished outrages to continue ? What 
then will you say of the no less effective manner in which I was silenced ? Was 
it not also that outrages might continue ? Was it not in furtherance of an 
atrocious policy that murder and outrage should follow in the wake of the Land 
League that Irish landlordism might be represented to the British people as bat- 
tling, not with justifiable reform, but with social savagery ? Does this seem to 
you too wicked a policy to be credited ? Look at the facts. Is it not the policy 
that has been carried out by Mr. Forster ? I speak of myself only as an exam- 
ple. Is it not true that my arrest was followed by the arrest in every locality of 
the men who were the safest and surest leaders of the popular movement, the 
men who most steadfastly and strongly set their faces against outrage ? Is it 
not a fact that when they were arrested, conservative and prudent men were 
driven into silence by fear of arrest, and the guidance of an excited people, 
smarting under the most cruel provocations, was left to the secret councils of 
irresponsible passion ? I am not charging Mr. Forster with being a monster. 
Personally he is, I doubt not, an estimable gentleman ; but weaknesses, which 
in private life are unobserved, become so magnified when he who is subject to 
them is made the absolute ruler of a nation that they have the effect of crimes. 
Mr. Forster found in Ireland a traditional policy of government. He followed 
it ; or perhaps, to speak more correctly, it controlled him. What are the facts 
of Irish history ? Are they not that over and over again seditious conspiracies 
have been allowed to grow, nay, even have been stimulated, in order that a cer- 
tain stage of criminality should be reached by those whose actions and plans were 
known to the police, so that the blow should be struck at their movements with 
greater iclat, and the chastisement given be all the more effective from the num- 
bers involved in the revolutionary design ? If such a policy has not been pur- 
sued in connection with the present social movement, I have been deceived into 
believing that my reconsignment to penal servitude was in consequence of hav- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. iQf 



ing endeavored to thwart such a policy at the time when it began, in my opin- 
ion, to show itself to all who are conversant with Castle tactics in Ireland, and 
who know the desperate position in which Irish landlordism would be placed if 
English opinion could not be turned from the consideration of land reform and 
focussed upon outrages. I was either sent back to penal servitude in pursuance 
of such a policy, or I was not. Mr. Forster, who, I suppose, ordered my arrest, 
can explain why I was struck down without any explanation given to me, or 
any chance afforded to defend myself against whatever charge had determined 
my arrest. Three weeks previous to that event Mr. Forster declared in the 
House of Commons, in answer to a question put to him by Lord Randolph 
Churchill, that I had been guilty of no act in connection with my ticket-of-leave 
that would justify the Government in cancelling that document. During those 
three weeks I was engaged almost every day in denouncing outrage throughout 
Ireland, in calling attention to undetected crime in a country having a police 
force of over twelve thousand, and in endeavors to expose what I fully believed 
to be numbers of manufactured outrages. If I was not arrested for this work, 
for what was I arrested ? If upon secret information of ulterior designs, why 
not charge me with these and crush the founder of the Land League at a blow, 
by showing the priests and constitutionalists in Ireland that they relied upon a 
man who was leading them on to revolution instead of to a peaceful settlement 
of the Land Question r" I challenge Mr. Forster, or whoever is responsible for 
my arrest, to come forward now and declare upon what grounds I was deprived 
of liberty during the past fifteen months, or allow Dublin Castle to be under the 
imputation of having removed me from its path, because of my stand against the 
policy of conniving at murder and outrage. I am constrained to make this de- 
mand now from a conscientious belief that had I been permitted to continue my 
crusade against outrage, to have levelled all the influence of the Land League 
against the commission of murder and the mutilation of cattle, I could have pre- 
vented numbers of crimes that now stain the name of Ireland, and have averted 
the horrible deed of Saturday last. This is no vain boast. I refer Mr. Forster 
to my speech at Kilbrin, County Cork, a fornight previous to my arrest, in which 
I predicted the accumulation of crime that would result from his policy, and held 
him answerable before God for the consequences that would inevitably follow 
from police terrorism and coercion." 
Then in the final passage he says : 



1Q£ CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" I am a convicted Fenian. Very well*, I am. It is true that I was convicted 
on a false charge sworn to by a salaried perjurer, whom I had never seen ere he 
confronted me in the dock at Newgate, but I do not wish to plead that." 

Mr. Davitt does not wish that to be misunderstood. He does not mean 
that he was not rightly charged with being a Fenian, but he does mean to repre- 
sent that one of the persons — I think the man was Corydon, who was one of the 
witnesses — gave false testimony in that particular matter. 

" I would only ask any fair-minded Englishman to read a few chapters of 
Irish history, to put himself in imagination in the place of the son of an evicted 
Irish peasant, and to answer whether it is any stigma to an Irishman that he has 
been a Fenian ! The people of Ireland do not think so. Nothing so shows the 
false relations into which the two countries have been brought by misunderstand- 
ing and misrule as that a man may be a criminal on one side of the Irish Sea and 
a patriot on the other. And if it be said, as many an unthinking Englishman 
would say, that a Fenian is a man who wishes to burn, to blow up, to murder, I 
will not reply even to that, though I know it to be untrue. I will only ask if it 
be just to hold that the man of mature years must be held to the opinions of his 
youth ? And this, at least, let me say for myself: if in the hot blood of early 
manhood, smarting under the cruelties and indignities perpetrated on my coun- 
try, I saw in an appeal to force the only means of succoring her, there has dawned 
upon my graver thoughts in the bitter solitude of a felon's cell a nobler vision — 
a dream of the enfranchisement and fraternization of peoples, of the conquering 
of hate by justice. 

" I have suffered by their power, and, as I believe, by their ignorance and 
prejudice, but there is in my heart to-day no sentiment of bitterness toward the 
English people. The gospel of the land for the people is a universal gospel, and 
in its triumph is involved the social regeneration of England as clearly and as 
fully as the social regeneration of Ireland. In the heart of whoever receives it 
rare bitterness and ancient hatred die away; possibly this may not be understood 
by you. But one word at least let me say. If you would find a modus vivendi 
between the English and Irish people it is easy ; treat us as equals, treat us as 
men. 

" Willingly will I go to Ireland to do whatever I can to further the peace- 
ful doctrines I have always advocated ; but I am confident that nothing I could 
do or say in Ireland would strike as effectually at the fell purpose of revenge as 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



109 



the feeling of horror which has been sent like an electric shock through every 
home of Ireland by the slaughter of an innocent and inoffensive Englishman, un- 
der circumstances that have lent to the black deed every possible attribute of 
atrocity. Yet, further than this, there is a word I would say. How can I or 
any one else protest with effect against outrages, when the most brutal and irri- 
tating outrages are being committed in the name of the law, when tender ladies 
are sent to prison as persons of evil fame, when huts that charity has erected to 
shelter the unfortunate are torn down, little boys are ruthlessly shot down by the 
constabulary, and men of the highest character are still held in jail on suspicion ? 
" I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
" London, ioth May. Michael Davitt." 

Mr. O'Connor says that " If the Phoenix Park assassination preached with 
its bloody tongue one doctrine more loudly than another, it was the futility and 
the wickedness and the disaster of the policy for which Mr. Forster was respon- 
sible." There is undoubtedly much truth in this assertion ; but we must look at 
it more dispassionately. In the debates which followed — for a time, Mr. O'Con- 
nor's statement was practically borne out ; for instance Sir William Harcourt — 
one of Mr. Forster's colleagues said : 

" It was assumed .... that the Protection of Person and Property Bill 
was an appropriate remedy, and that if we only had the summary power of ar- 
rest, it would be sufficient to put down crime. My right honorable friend, who 
had charge of that measure, said, 'We can discover the persons who commit 
these crimes — these village ruffians ; we know them ; we can put them in prison ; 
we can put down crime.' That turned out not to be so. The men were shut 
up ; more men were shut up time after time ; yet crime went on increasing. It 
was never suggested — nor did it occur to anybody — that that measure would 
have failed so completely as it did in suppressing crime. The consequence was 
that the shutting up of these people did not sensibly diminish crime. On the 
contrary, the more people were shut up, the more crime increased " (Hansard, 
vol. cclxxvi., pp. 429, 430). 

But logical argument was not an admissible quantity in the calculations of 
expediency now. Passion was aroused ; the hereditary animosity of the Eng- 
lish nation was stirred into flame against a whole nation that abhorred crime, 
and especially this crime, more than did they — because of the criminality of a 



HO CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

few assassins. Public opinion in England at once demanded a new coercion 
act, and, despite the dogged fight of the Irish members, the " Crimes Bill " was 
passed, and a new reign of terror and of renewed crime began in Ireland. 

The progress of the bill was very slow ; every word of it, which, if ex- 
punged, would minimize its coercive value, was fought night after night, until 
finally the cloture was enforced by Sir Lyon Playfair on the morning of Satur- 
day, July ist. It was a most outrageous assumption of power, and I doubt 
whether the ministry believed it an expedient move ; nevertheless, they tacitly 
concurred in his ruling, and the following Irish members were declared guilty of 
obstruction and suspended en masse: Mr. Biggar, Mr. Callan, Dr. Commins, 
Mr. Dillon, Mr. Healy, Mr. Leamy, Mr. Marum, Mr. Metge, Mr. McCarthy, 
Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Richard Power, Mr. 
Redmond, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Sullivan. A little later the following members 
of the Irish party were suspended : Mr. Byrne, Mr. Corbett, Mr. E. D. Gray, 
Mr. Lalor, Mr. Leahy, Mr. A. O'Connor, Mr. James O'Kelly, Mr. W. H. 
O'Sullivan, and Mr. Sheil. 

It was a deliberate attempt to deprive the representatives of Ireland from 
taking part in the passage of a measure in which their opinions should be om- 
nipotent ; for it concerned only the liberties of their constituents. Every one 
of them condemned this Phoenix Park tragedy. The most malignant enemy of 
the Irish people could not have struck a more malignant blow ; and it is indeed 
hard if public men are to have accusations levelled against them of complicity in 
so foul a story, and of subsequent condonation of so foul an act, and to be held 
up to public obloquy and opprobrium, when they raise their voice in condemna- 
tion of that dastardly deed, as hypocrites professing sentiments of abhorrence 
which are assumed for the occasion. Lord Frederick Cavendish's death un- 
doubtedly was not even within the objects of those wretched men who had em- 
barked upon this detestable enterprise. Lord Frederick Cavendish met his 
death because, with the true instincts of a brave man, he was fighting against the 
murderers, in defense of his friend and companion. 

The leaders of the Irish party were so shocked that Mr. Parnell, yielding to 
a moment of despair, offered to retire from public life. And, to use the words 
of Sir Charles Russell, " Could this be acting ; or, was it not the conduct of a 
man deeply impressed with the horror of what had occurred, and anxious to 
show, in every way he could, his detestation of what had happened ? " Upon 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. \H 



the next day following, the then three leaders of the Irish race, Charles Stewart 
Parnell and John Dillon — both of whom had been released from Kilmainham 
on May 2d — and Michael Davitt, who was only released from Portland on May 
6th, after the murders had taken place, issued this manifesto : 

"To the People or Ireland : — On the eve of what seemed a bright fu- 
ture for our country, that evil destiny, which has apparently pursued us for cen- 
turies, has struck another blow at our hopes, which cannot be exaggerated in its 
disastrous consequences. In this hour of sorrowful gloom we venture to give 
an expression of our profoundest sympathy with the people of Ireland in the 
calamity that has befallen our cause through a horrible deed, and to those who 
had determined at the last hour that a policy of conciliation should supplant 
that of terrorism and national distrust. We earnestly hope that the attitude and 
action of the whole Irish people will show the world that assassination, such as 
has startled us almost to the abandonment of hope for our country's future, is 
deeply and religiously abhorrent to their every feeling and instinct. 

" We appeal to you to show by every manner of expression that, amidst the 
universal feeling of horror which this assassination has excited, no people feels 
so intense a detestation of its atrocity, or so deep a sympathy for those whose 
hearts must be seared by it, as the nation upon whose prospects and reviving 
hopes it may entail consequences more ruinous than have fallen to the lot of 
unhappy Ireland during the present generation. We feel that no act has ever 
been perpetrated in our country during the exciting struggles for social and po- 
litical rights of the past fifty years that has so stained the name of hospitable Ire- 
land as this cowardly and unprovoked assassination of a friendly stranger, and 
that until the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke are 
brought to justice that stain will sully our country's name. 

" (Signed), Charles S. Parnell. 

John Dillon. 
Michael Davitt." 

But this expression of horror and sorrow for the assassination of Lord 
Frederick Cavendish — which was shared in by the entire Irish race at home and 
abroad — did not decrease the demands for coercion, and on July 2, 1882, the 
most drastic coercion bill that had ever before been passed for a civilized nation 
received the royal assent and became law. 



U2 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

It was a curious anomaly that, although the Crimes Act was actually pro- 
posed immediately after the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. 
Burke, and did not become law for nearly two months, the Arrears Bill, which 
was drafted by Mr. Parnell while he was in Kilmainham prison, was introduced 
into the English House of Commons on May 15th. But, then, this was one of 
the terms of Mr. Parnell's " treaty " with the Government. This Act was one 
of the most important concessions to Ireland since the Catholic Emancipation. 
For the first time in the history of the country a British Government made use 
of the national exchequer, not to coerce Irishmen, nor to make loans which the 
needy borrower would find it hard to repay, but to make a free gift to men 
whose sufferings were unavoidable and undeserved. The measure contained in 
an improved form those features which were considered necessary for the bene-* 
ficial working of the Land Act of 1881, but which were stricken out of that bill 
by the landlord interest in the House of Lords. By those who understood the 
Irish land question a remission of arrears had always been proclaimed an essen- 
tial, without which all curative legislation would necessarily prove abortive. 
The pretended object of the land acts of 1870 and 1881 was to put a stop to 
evictions, but it was idle to hope to accomplish this while the smaller farmers, 
for whose benefit the legislation was mainly devised, remained in arrears and 
subject, therefore, to ejectment. Neither of the acts had curbed the power of 
the landlords to evict for arrears, and in that respect the act of 188 1 was particu- 
larly blameworthy. The Arrears Bill not only tended to put a stop to evictions, 
but it brought succor and redress to those who had been evicted during the six 
months preceding its passage. Very many tenants were in arrears for .five, 
eight, and, in some cases, fifteen years ; but, under the bill, it did not matter if 
the tenant owed the landlord rent for twenty years, the latter was in no case to 
receive more than two years' rental ; and of those two the tenant need pay but 
one, the Government assuming the payment of the other. Nor for these two 
years was the landlord to receive the rack-rents fixed by himself. He was to be 
paid according to Griffith's valuation, which was made some forty years ago. 
The tenant had, furthermore, until July, 1883, in which to tender his one year's 
rent, according to Griffith's valuation, on payment of which all arrears, no mat- 
ter how long accumulated, would be cancelled forever. Moreover, any money 
paid as rent during the year 1881 was held, under the bill, to be paid on account 
of that year, and not on account of previous years during which no rent had 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



113 



been paid, and the law was applicable to all tenants paying less than ^30 a year 
upon Griffith's valuation ; that is to say, to the great mass of the Irish peasantry. 
The claims of the Irish landlords were computed as high as j£i 7,000,000, and 
never placed below £10,000,000. Of this large sum they were to get, under 
the bill, only ,£4,000,000, one-half from the tenants and the other half from the 
Government, the Government portion to be drawn principally from the Irish 
Church Surplus Fund. 

The result of this Arrears Act, which became a law in August, 1882, was 
exactly in accordance with Mr. Parnell's anticipations in its effect upon the 
country, and here it will be of historical value to quote the figures in proof of 
his extraordinary foreknowledge of the result : 



Murders 

Firing at persons .... 
Incendiary and arson 

Cattle outrages 

Threatening letters. . 
Firing into dwellings 



Two years, 




880-1881, 


1882, alone. 


average. 




i2y 2 


26 


45^ 


58 


283 


281 


128 


144 


1,764 


2,009 


105 


117 


2.338 


2,635 



average. 



4 

12.6 
no 

61 
389.8 

29.6 

607 



In 1880 and 1881 the Land League was in force; in 1882 the Land 
League was suppressed ; and in 1883 the Arrears Bill had come into operation 
and the National League was founded. I believe that these figures prove be- 
yond a shadow of a doubt that coercion increased crime, as the figures of 1882 
show, and that conciliatory measures diminished it. As Mr. Parnell said when 
he was in prison in Kilmainham during the negotiations relative to the famous 
Kilmainham Treaty : " Pass an Arrears Bill ; drop the Coercion Act, which has 
not answered its purpose ; do not trouble about the release of myself and my 
colleagues ; that will come in time. The point is to go at the causes, as we be- 
lieve them to be, of the disturbance of the country." 

I do not believe it would serve any useful purpose to prolong this chapter, 
which is already so full of detail of the bitterness of England's ministers toward 



114 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Ireland in those early days of Mr. Parnell's leadership. A happier epoch was 
at hand ; and it is more pleasurable to record that, to thousands of Irish homes, 
Mr. Parnell brought happiness — even temporarily. 

This foreknowledge of his was very extraordinary. The needs of England 
gave him the keenest interest ; he sometimes seemed to have forgotten Irish 
business ; but this exceeding watchfulness of English affairs was simply and only 
for the purpose of thwarting them for Ireland's benefit. And in this bold role 
he never erred. He, more than any other man, accepted, and proved the truth 
of the adage, " England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." And he never 
failed in his calculations of time concerning these matters. As a matter of fact 
the English parties and the Ministry watched Mr. Parnell as they would a 
thermometer, for he literally held the balance of power in the English Parlia- 
ment, and that balance never shifted except for Ireland's benefit. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mr. Parnell's Sympathy for even the Prison Officials — The "Times" Forgery— John 
Stuart's Estimate of Mr. Parnell— General Election of 1885— Bentham on the 
Theory of Legislation — Parnell and the Irish Fisheries — The Home Rule Struggle 
— Parnell, Gladstone, and the Tories. 



S I said, in the opening chapter, Mr. Parnell hated oppression of any 
kind, and — no matter where it existed — was always in deep sym- 
pathy with the oppressed. A most peculiar instance of this occurred 
during his incarceration in Kilmainham. It happened during the negotiations 
of the famous Kilmainham Treaty. Captain O'Shea went to visit him at the 
prison, and during their conversation Mr. Parnell made a request that O'Shea 
should introduce into Parliament a bill for the amelioration of the condition of 
the Irish prison officials. But I shall quote Hansard as my authority for this. 
In a speech made by Captain O'Shea in the House of Commons, in reply to 
Mr. Forster, he told this incident, as follows : 

" Their conversation " [that is to say, the conversation between him and 
Mr. Parnell], " indeed, was merely that of personal friends, and certainly not of 
political allies, which the House was aware they had never been held to exactly 
be. Although he made no remark at the time, he observed with surprise " 
[that is, Captain O'Shea] "there was a total absence in the honorable member 
of rancor or ill-feeling." [The honorable member was Mr. Parnell.] " On the 
contrary, the honorable gentleman told him of the kindness and consideration 
he had received in Kilmainham, and asked him to bring forward another Irish 
grievance in Committee of Supply, and that was that prison officials in Ireland 
were very much worse paid than the prison officials in England. When he 
(Mr. O'Shea) expressed his opinion that the continued imprisonment of the 
suspects was exercising a most pernicious effect in Ireland, and his hope that 
the Government would make his release permanent, the honorable member re- 
plied — and he afterward took a note of what the honorable gentleman had said 
— ' Never mind the suspects, we can well afford to see the Coercion Act out. 
If you have any influence, do not fritter it away upon us ; use it to get the 

(115) 



HQ CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

arrears practically adjusted. Impress on every one your own opinion as to the 
necessity of making the contribution from the State a gift and not a loan ; and, 
further, the equal necessity of absolute compulsion. The great object of my 
life, added the honorable member, is to settle the Land Question. Now that 
the Tories have adopted my view as to peasant proprietary, the extension of 
the Purchase Clauses is safe. You have always supported the leaseholders as 
strongly as myself ; but the great object now is to stay evictions by the intro- 
duction of an Arrears Bill.' He (Mr. O'Shea) proceeded then to speak of the 
demoralization of the country, of the no-rent manifesto, of Captain Moonlight, 
and of other intimidators. The honorable gentleman replied — ' Let eviction 
cease, and terrorism will cease. The Moonlighters are sons of small tenants 
threatened with eviction, who believe the only escape for themselves and fam- 
ilies, is by preventing their more solvent neighbors paying their rent.' " 

It was a strange conversation undoubtedly — that of a man now in prison, 
for no other crime than that he defended the oppressed against a powerful 
Government, begging that the condition of the prison officials of that Govern- 
ment should be improved. But it only proved the greatness of the man. It 
mattered not to him whether they were the officials of the British Govern- 
ment ; they were not properly treated, and therefore his heart went out to them 
as did it for the people of Ireland, for whom he was willing to, and did, suffer 
so much. 

Immediately after the Phoenix Park murders the London Times began to 
publish the most rancorous editorials — even for that paper — which ever ap- 
peared in the columns of a newspaper. Their idea or intention was to stir up 
the feelings of the English people against the Irish nation, and it was not diffi- 
cult to succeed. But they went farther upon the eve of the passing of Balfour's 
Coercion Act, April 18, 1886. They purchased letters purporting to have been 
written by Mr. Parnell and other leaders — which at the time (it has been proved 
before a Royal Commission) they knew were forgeries. Here is the first of 
these famous forgeries, which were published by the Times to prejudice the 
English members and induce them to vote for coercion : 

"May 15, 1882. 

" Dear Sir — I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you 
should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to us. To 
do that promptly was plainly our best policy. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. HJ 



" But you can tell him and all others concerned that though I regret the 
accident of Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got 
no more than his deserts. 

" You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also ; 
but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons. 

" Yours very truly, Chas. S. Parnell." 

Perhaps I am anticipating the period ; but as all of these forged letters 

and the articles concerning them relate to the time directly succeeding the 

assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish, I think it is opportune to deal with 

the case here. Here is another example : 

"January 9, 1882. 

" Dear E. — What are these fellows waiting for ? This inaction is inex- 
cusable ; our best men are in prison and nothing is being done. 

" Let there be an end of this hesitancy. Prompt action is called for. 

" You undertook to make it hot for old Forster and Co. Let us have 
some evidence of your power to do so. 

" My health is good, thanks. 

" Yours very truly, Chas. S. Parnell." 

1 

And these are extracts from the editorials of the Times, beginning on 
April 1 8th, the date of the first publication of the forgeries, and ending on 
July 13th: 

" In concluding our series of articles on ' Parnellism and Crime,' we in- 
timated that, besides the damning facts which were there recorded, unpublished 
evidence existed which would bind still closer the links between the ' Consti- 
tutional' chiefs and the contrivers of murder and outrage. In view of the 
unblushing denials of Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on Friday night, we do not 
think it right to withhold any longer from public knowledge the fact that we 
possess, and have had in our custody for some time, documentary evidence 
which has a most serious bearing on the Parnellite conspiracy, and which, after 
a most careful and minute scrutiny, is, we are satisfied, quite authentic. We 
produce one document in facsimile to-day by a process the accuracy of which 
cannot be impunged, and we invite Mr. Parnell to explain how his signature 
has become attached to such a letter." 

April 19. — " We have in our possession several undoubted examples of 



118 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Mr. Parnell's signature, with which that of the letter has been carefully com- 
pared, and we repeat that, in our deliberate judgment, there can be no doubt 
of the genuineness of the latter." 

April 21. — " It is a matter of no consequence to us whether Mr. Parnell 
attempts to vindicate his character or abstains from doing so. In the first case 
we shall substantiate our charges." 

April 25. — " But never have we acted under a graver sense of responsi- 
bility, under a stronger conviction of obligation, than in the present contro- 
versy." 

Jidy 6. — " These charges, we acknowledge, are ' grave ' and ' terrible,' as 
Lord Coleridge calls them. We have brought them forward, however, under 
the fullest sense of responsibility, and with perfect readiness that they should be 
sifted to the bottom." 

July 13. — -"We are prepared with our proofs of the genuineness and au- 
thenticity of the letters read by Sir Richard Webster." 

This is a forgery purporting to have been written by Mr. Egan : 

" I have by this post sent M. ^"200. He will give you what you want. 
When will you undertake to get to work and give us value for our money ? 

" Faithfully yours, Patrick Egan. 

"James Carey, Esq." 

It is addressed to that notorious informer and criminal, James Carey. This 
letter was copied, in facsimile, from a letter written by Mr. Egan to Carey, 
concerning the purchase of a newspaper, at the time when Carey was a member 
of the Dublin Town Council and supposed to be a most reputable man. It is 
almost unnecessary to say that this forgery was printed with the distinct inten- 
tion of connecting the leaders of the National movement with the " Invin- 
cibles"; and this was precisely the effect which it had upon the public mind in 
England. The Government eagerly seized the opportunity to attack Mr. Par- 
nell and his followers, and at page 197 of the Blue-Book of that session the 
following sentence occurs (copied from the Times) : 

" Murder still startles the casuist and the doctrinaire, and we charge that the 
Land League chiefs based their movements on a scheme of assassination, care- 
fully calculated and coolly applied. Be the ultimate goal of these men what it 
will, they are content to march toward it in company with murderers. Mur- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. mj 



derers provide their funds, murderers share their inmost councils, murderers have 
gone forth from tne League even to set their bloody work afoot, and have presently 
returned to consult the constitutional leaders on the advancement of the cause." 

I do not need to say one single word in illustration of what that means. It 
means that Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and the rest were deliberately 
parties to setting on foot schemes of assassination, carefully calculated and ap- 
plied, that the enactors of those schemes went straight from the councils of the 
Land League leaders to do their criminal work, and then have presently returned 
to state the result of their action. Further on, in that same Blue- Book, there is 
a further quotation from the Times : 

" Merely to have his revenge upon his countrymen for rejecting his advice, 
and to prove his declaration, that ' all other business shall be made impossible,' 
to be no idle threat, Mr. Gladstone and his party are deliberately allying them- 
selves with the paid agents of an organization whose ultimate aim is plunder, 
whose ultimate sanction is murder, to paralyze the House of Commons, and to 
hand Ireland over to social and financial ruin." 

Of course the Tory government was delighted — ' hideously delighted ' to 
have the opportunity of attacking the ex-Prime Minister — -even at the expense 
of, at the same time, trampling upon a people because of the publication of let- 
ters which, they were well aware, were most atrocious forgeries. There was not 
a newspaper in England that did not howl with exultation over " the Parnellites 
unmasked"; at every public meeting in England, Mr. Parnell was denounced as 
an associate of murderers and dynamiters, but still the chief held his counsel. 
It is one of the most remarkable incidents in all history how the leader of the 
Irish race, and his colleagues, remained in dignified silence whilst this maelstrom 
of passion was being hurled at them. But they had a wise general for a leader, 
and he bided his time — knowing full well that in a little while the torrent of 
Tory anger would recoil upon themselves. 

No man — not even did the newspapers spread this calumny with such suc- 
cess and vindictiveness as did W. H. Smith — the Tory leader of the House of 
Commons. The forged letters were fac-similed upon circulars and in pamphlets, 
and displayed upon the book-stands of W. H. Smith & Sons, at every railway 
station in the country. His agents were instructed to press them for sale. It 
was the most audacious, as well as contemptible political trick ever perpetrated 
by a minister. 



120 CHAKLES STEWART PARNELL. 

But, at last, Mr. Parnell decided to uncover his batteries, and, in the House 
of Commons, he demanded that the charges against him and his colleagues be 
tested, even before a tribunal composed of their enemies. But the Unionist 
government, who in their hearts knew full well the falsehood of the charge, 
were too wary — a business man, an old newsboy, was at the helm and, after con- 
sultation with his party, Mr. Smith said that the Government would consent to 
an inquisition, or rather a criminal prosecution should be brought in, or entered 
against the Times, and that the Attorney-General would be instructed on the 
part of the Government to prosecute. As Mr. O'Connor mildly puts it : "The 
very impudence of the proposal almost took men's breath away." 

The Irish members at once saw that what they were asked to enter into 
was a collusive action in which the Government, while professing to fight their 
cause, would be acting as the spy and the friend of their enemies. It will be 
seen by and by that the subsequent conduct of the Attorney-General gave but 
too much ground — in fact, entirely confirmed the suspicion ; for it was this very 
gentleman who was to honestly and fearlessly prosecute the Times on behalf of 
the Irish members that has since been the leading advocate of the Times in pros- 
ecuting these charges against the Irish members. In the hands of the Attorney- 
General the Irish members would have been as safe as the revolutionary conspir- 
ators were in the hands of the now famous Major Le Caron. 

This audacious and dishonest proposal of the Government was rejected by 
the Irish members, and then the Tories — having for the moment run away from 
the charges — returned to them, and once more began to propagate the charges 
which they had not had the courage to test. This, again, is conduct that may 
well be examined as showing the clearness of the title of the Tory Party to the 
distinction of being the party of English gentlemen. The Tories now asked 
that Mr. Parnell should go before a London jury. Indeed, they went further, 
and expressed their astonishment that he did not go before any jury. If he did 
not like a jury in London, said Mr. Goschen, then let him try a jury in Edin- 
burgh, and if he didn't like a jury in Edinburgh, why, let him try one in Dublin. 

Mr. Parnell declined to place his fortunes, and those of his party, before a 
London jury. There is no necessity for going at any length into the reasons 
which prompted this decision. It is known that London juries consist mainly 
of that prejudiced and ill-informed class of small Tories who are not intellectually 
capable of giving a verdict on a question with so many various and broad aspects 




plgott as he appeared on the wltness-stand in the: 
Parnell-" Times " Commission. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 121 



as a political movement ; and it was because they knew the incompetence and 
the partiality of the tribunal that the Tories so strongly insisted on recommend- 
ing it to Mr. Parnell. Before a committee of the House of Commons, on the 
other hand, the evidence would be given in accord with the rules of common 
sense, and not under the strict and technical rules which guide law courts. The 
tribunal would have consisted of political partisans, it is true, but then one side 
would have its representatives as well as the other ; and if men acted as parti- 
sans, they would do so openly. Besides, it was felt by Mr. Parnell that he 
would have been able to bring evidence so convincing of his innocence of the 
main charge brought against him, that even his most bitter and most unscrupu- 
lous enemies would be shamed into giving a verdict in his favor. However, the 
Tories rejected the appeal to a parliamentary committee, and Mr. Parnell 
rejected the appeal to a London jury ; and so the matter seemed to have come 
to a lame and impotent conclusion. 

And so it went on until Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell — at that time a fugi- 
tive leader-writer for the Morning Post — considered that his own character was 
directly impeached by the articles in the Times. Why he should think so has 
not yet been explained ; but, nevertheless, he brought action against the Times 
for libel ; and, although the trial ended absurdly, it renewed attention to the 
charges made against Mr. Parnell in that paper. This trial of O'Donnell v. 
Walter took place in July, 1888, and at that time Mr. Macdonald of the Times 
knew that the forged letters came from Richard Pigott, because he had then in 
his possession a letter purporting to have been addressed by Mr. Parnell to 
Richard Pigott himself, and in which Pigott's name appeared. Nevertheless, 
the publication of the letters still went on. 

The methods by which the letters were sold to the Times, and the strange 
artifices of Pigott and his middle-man — Houston — form one of the most inter- 
esting, as it is the most infamous chapter in the connection between England 
and Ireland during the rigime of Mr. Parnell, as leader of the Irish people. Sir 
Charles Russell states this case so clearly that I shall give it in his words as it 
was told by him in his address before the Royal Commission in the Times-Par- 
nell case. He says : 

" Mr. Parnell does not believe that Houston — a quondam reporter — a re- 
spectable position, and I am not saying this by way of contumely of him — 
Houston, a quondam reporter on Dublin newspapers, afterward promoted to 



12-2 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

the position of secretary of the Loyal and Patriotic Union — he does not believe 
that Mr. Houston adventured on this enterprise, involving, as it turns out, the 
expenditure of thousands of pounds, in his own character of a private person. 
He does not believe that Professor Maguire, who unhappily cannot now be 
called, was in a position to advance, or did advance of his own money, a sum of 
nearly a thousand pounds. He does believe that these gentlemen, one and all, 
were members of that association, and, if his information is right, members of 
the finance committee of that association, and that it was from that body, rep- 
resenting the landed interests of Ireland, a class which, because of the conduct 
and the policy of Mr. Parnell, has been arrayed in active hostility against him in 
his public life — aye, and has been backing up the Times in this inquiry — it is be- 
cause of that that he declines to believe the story put forward by Mr. Houston, 
which he desires and intends to sift here or elsewhere, or both, to the bottom. 

" My Lords, let me follow out this story. In the autumn of 1885 Mr. 
Houston goes to visit Richard Pigott. Mr. Houston is himself an Irishman, 
or the son of an Irishman — an Irish prison official in Ireland, as I am informed. 
He had lived his life, so far as we know it, in Dublin. He had been conversant 
with political matters in Dublin, because his occupation had been, as I have said, 
as reporter upon several papers. He must have known the story of Richard 
Pigott, for the whole world of Ireland knew it. Your Lordships may not be 
aware of the fact that at the very time that the forged letter, known as the fac- 
simile letter, appeared, there also appeared in a London newspaper, the paper 
called Truth, the statement, that it was suspected either that this letter was not 
one written by Mr. Parnell, but to which his name had been got for some other 
purpose, or it was suspected and believed that it was a forgery proceeding from 
Richard Pigott — that, my Lords, at the very time the publication appeared — 
known to all the world ; known, of course, to the proprietors of the Times ; known, 
of course, to those who instructed my learned friends. 

"Well, my Lords, Houston approaches Pigott. I do not want to say more 
of that wretched man than is unavoidable. I am sure I do not know upon whom 
the greater burden of moral guilt rests in this matter. It is to be said of this 
wretched man that at all events he cannot be accused of bringing voluntarily his 
spurious wares into the market. It is at least true to say for him that in his 
wretched penury, with children dependent upon him, at a time that he was 
begging for small sums of relief, at a time that he was complaining of the press- 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 123 



ure of distress so great that his very goods were to be seized for the payment 
of his rent, it is at that time that the tempter comes to him ; and to this man, 
in whom at all events there survived the strong instincts of fatherly affection 
with some four children depending upon him, and no honest means of earning 
a livelihood, then comes the tempter, holding out to him a prospect of indefinite 
employment upon terms of one pound a day while he was working, and one 
guinea, I think it was, a day for his expenses. Then a little time passes. He 
has been asked, if he can get hold of any documents to incriminate any of 
the leaders ? He says he will try. He goes, or pretends to go, pleasantly 
journeying backwards and forwards at the expense of the Loyal and Patriotic 
Union (or Mr. Houston), and after a little time he comes with his first batch. 
But meanwhile Mr. Houston pays a visit to the Times, and makes an offer to 
Lord Hartington, and is suggested to have made overtures to the Pall Mall 
Gazette. I do not stop to inquire into these. They are not the main thread of 
my story. But what is the course, when they come to closer quarters, and when 
these payments have to be made, which Houston pursues? I do not desire, 
moved as I am (as I confess I am) to indignation at his conduct, to put it higher 
than the bare facts justify. Houston deliberately pursues a course of conduct 
in relation to this infamous story such as would have been pursued (I will say 
no more than that) by a man that knew he was lending himself to a deliberate 
manufacture of deliberate forgeries ; for how else and on what rational ground 
can you explain that in his payments to Pigott he pursues every device and con- 
trivance to render it impossible to trace the fact that he has paid the money ? 
How comes it that he destroys every vestige, according to his account, of corre- 
spondence with Pigott ? But when does he destroy it ? Not during the pro- 
duction and manufacture of these letters, but when your Lordships' court is sit- 
ting, after the inquiry has begun, and when he knows that your Lordships would 
take no denial when the question of the genuineness of these letters came to be 
considered, when he knows that he will be called upon to produce the whole of 
that correspondence. Nay, more, he takes that course of conduct which I say 
is jujt the course of conduct that a man, knowing he was engaged in an infamous 
fraud, would have followed. He destroys those documents after he has had the 
subpoena from the solicitor, Mr. Lewis, who instructs me, and after that subpoena 
had required him as by an order from the court to produce the documents or any 
documents which would throw light upon the subject of this inquiry. 



124 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" I do not know whether Mr. Houston is master or man in the Loyal Patri- 
otic Union. I do not know whether they can afford, whether they dare afford, 
to send him about his business ; but I say, in the face of his own confession 
in this court of the course he has pursued in relation to this matter, he is un- 
worthy of the confidence of any respectable body of men or of any respectable 
individual. What is the next step? That was in July, 1886. Houston brought 
to the Times, on the principle of ' sale or return,' in the last week of November 
or the beginning of December, 1886, the first batch of forged letters; and what 
is paid for them ? The story is a remarkable and interesting story in relation to 
the first batch. According to one statement, the statement of Mr. Macdonald, 
a sum of ,£1,780 altogether has been paid. The cheques put in by Mr. Soames 
— for he was the medium of the payment to Houston — are ,£1,000 on the 4th of 
May, 1887 ; ,£200 on the 25th of July, 1887 ; £30 on the 8th of October, 1887 ; 
£40 on the 13th of December, 1887; and on the 27th of January, 1888, ,£200, 
making £"1,470. The other statement — and there must be something to explain 
which I have not been able to follow, and do not care to stop to follow — is the 
statement in the account given by Mr. Macdonald: payment in May, 1887, of 
£1,000 ; in July of £"400 ; in January of £"200 ; also in January £"i8o ; making 
together the sum of £"1,780. Of that sum for the first batch Pigott got £"500 
and 100 guineas for himself; and there were altogether computed about £975 
expenses — Mr. Houston keeping £"200 for his own expenses — the expenses con- 
sisting of the journeyings of Pigott hither and thither on these infamous quests. 
My Lords, those he represented, the company, or syndicate, or partnership of the 
Times, or those, at least, who have come before us, seem to have lost their heads 
over this matter. The only one who seems to have kept something like self- 
command was Mr. Buckle. He seems wisely to have declined personally to 
enter into any negotiation with Mr. Houston, but passed him on to Mr. Mac- 
donald. 

"The second batch is obtained; the cry is for more. Political hatred and 
animosity were not yet satisfied ; and as Pigott had found there was a demand 
at high prices for these wares, there was little difficulty in obtaining the second 
batch, and they, my Lord, were manufactured and delivered according to con- 
tract in the beginning of 1888. 

" Still, my Lords, there is a demand, and accordingly a further supply is 
forthcoming to meet the demand, and the third batch is delivered in April, 1888." 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 125 



And here it will not be uninteresting to give the charges which were made 
by the Times and substantially accepted as true by the Tory government. The 
first charge was : 

That the Land Leaguers deliberately based their movement on a scheme of 
assassination and outrage. 

The second charge was : 

That the leaders, by their speeches and those of their subordinates, directly 
incited the people to outrage, and took no step, by speech or act, to prevent, to 
stop, or to condemn the outrages. 

And says the Attorney-General for England, concerning this charge, know- 
ing full well that he was uttering an infamous falsehood : " During the whole 
period of these years there is not, so far as I know, one solitary speech amongst 
the thousands delivered in which any one of these men deprecated the outrages 
that were undoubtedly going on." 

The third charge was : 

That if at any time any of the leaders have verbally condemned or discour- 
aged outrage and crime, their language was insincere and hypocritical. 

This is the fourth charge : 

That no other cause has been, or could be, suggested for the crime in Ire- 
land, from and after 1879, except the agitation of the Land League and the 
speeches of its leaders. 

I think that, earlier in this book, I have distinctly proven that crime in Ire- 
land always increased or decreased according to the recurrence of distress, and 
that this recurring distress was invariably caused by the unhappy condition of 
the tenantry of Ireland in relation to those who had proprietary rights in the 
soil. 

The fifth charge is of a most infamous nature : 

That the funds of the Land League were habitually used to pay for out- 
rage, and were used to procure the escape from justice of criminals. 

Concerning this charge, the Attorney-General said : " But the fact is clear, 
however it be accounted for, that several months after he resigned the treasurer- 
ship, he (Mr. Egan) had funds in hand to enable his fellow-criminals in the 
Phoenix Park murder plot to escape to America." 

The sixth charge was : 

That at the time of the Kilmainham negotiations Mr. Parnell knew that 



126 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Sheridan and Boy ton had been organizing outrage, and therefore wished to use 
them to put down outrage. 

And the seventh charge — it should be borne in mind that all of these 
charges were based upon the forged letters — was this : 

That the Invincibles were a branch of the Land League, and were organ- 
ized and paid by Egan, the Treasurer of the Land Leagiie. 

The eighth charge deals more directly with Mr. Parnell himself. It is 
this: 

That Mr. Parnell was intimate with the leading Invincibles ; that he 
probably learned from them what they were about when he was released in 
April, 1882 ; that he recognized the Phoenix Park murders as their handi- 
work, and that, knowing it to be theirs, and partly in fear for his own safety, 
he secretly qualified and revoked the condemnation which he had thought it pol- 
itic publicly to pronounce. 

The ninth and last charge was : 

That Mr. Parnell, on the 23d of January, 1883, by an opportune remit- 
tance, enabled Byrne to escape from justice to France. 

To the uninitiated this would not seem to be a particularly heinous offense ; 
but, if it could be proved, it would have had a most damaging effect upon Mr. 
Parnell's character in England. The Crown and the Times sought to connect 
Frank Byrne with the Phoenix Park tragedy ; they even went so far as to state 
inside and outside Parliament that the knives used in the assassination were 
brought over to Dublin by Mrs. Byrne (Frank Byrne's wife). And I make no 
apology for quoting Sir Charles Russell in entire refutation of that charge. It 
will explain, more fully than could I explain it, the flimsy nature of the founda- 
tions upon which the Times and the Government of England built their infa- 
mous charges against Mr. Parnell and the other leaders of the Irish people. 
These are Sir Charles Russell's words : 

" Now, my Lords, let me give your Lordships connectedly the history of 
the whole matter, giving it not by a statement of my own, but by a reference to 
contemporaneous written records and contemporaneous written letters. Your 
Lordships will recollect the statement of Mulqueeny, which I may refer to at 
this part of the case, namely, that the English branch of the organization was 
frequently supplemented with funds from the Irish branch ; that Frank Byrne 
was the secretary of the English branch, which had no connection with the Irish 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 127 



branch ; that Frank Byrne, as the secretary, was the person who paid the liabili- 
ties of the English branch for organizers, and so forth. 

" Now, my Lords, to recur to the story. A meeting of the Executive of 
the Land and Labor branch of Great Britain was held 15th December, 1882, at 
Palace Chambers. The following minute in its books appears : 

' A letter from the general secretary was read [that was Byrne], stating 
that he was still unfit to return to business, and drawing the attention of the 
executive to its financial position, there being only a sum of £1 65. id. on hand 
if the vote asked for at present meeting should be adopted ; and that very little 
money would come in during the holidays, while the ordinary expenses would 
still be running; and that a printing account of ,£23 was due. He advised an 
application to the Irish National League, through Mr. Parnell, for an advance 
to cover present requirements. The secretary also suggested an adjournment of 
a fortnight to cover the Christmas holidays. 

' At this meeting it was proposed by Mr. Cronin, seconded by Mr. Rogers, 
and resolved (Mr. J. Carell only dissenting), " That the executive instruct the 
secretary to apply through Mr. Parnell to the Irish National League for a suffi- 
cient sum of money to meet our immediate requirements." ' 

"This is the 15th December. On the 29th December the following min- 
ute appears : 

' The general secretary wrote that he was still unfit to return to his duties, 
and that he had written to Mr. Parnell making application for an advance of 
,£100, to which he had received no reply.' 

" Now, my Lords, the next is a letter of the 1st of January, 1882, from 
Byrne direct to Mr. Parnell. This letter has been disclosed to the prosecution, 
and they have seen it, or had an opportunity of seeing it. On the 1st of 
January Me. Byrne wrote to Mr. Parnell in these words : ' Dear sir, I wrote to 
you about a fortnight since ' — and if your Lordships will just bear the dates in 
mind, you will see that will bring you back to the 15th of December, or about 
the 15 th of December, when he was first authorized by the committee to write 
to Mr. Parnell. That letter is not forthcoming. Mr. Parnell has not been able 
to find it, but there is no doubt that it was written. Mr. Byrne's letter is in 
these words : 
' C. S. Parnell, Esq. : 

' Dear Sir : — I wrote to you about a fortnight since, asking an advance from 
the Irish National League of £100 for the purposes of our organization. This 
letter, Mr. M'Sweeney tells me, you have not received, and as the matter is press- 



128 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

ing, I now beg to bring it under your notice. At a meeting of the Central Ex- 
ecutive, held on Friday, 15th December last, I was instructed by resolution "to 
apply to the Irish National League, through Mr. Parnell, M.P., for an advance 
of a sufficient sum of money to meet present requirements." Less than ^100 
would be of little use for this purpose. Our liabilities (pressing), including rent due 
last quarter, being upwards of ,£100. This state of things is due partly to the 
non-payment of the usual remittances during the Christmas holidays, but much 
more largely to the fact that for some time past, owing to a difference in title, 
etc., we have not seemed to be working on the same lines or in harmony with 
the Irish National League. For some time our income has been sadly diminish- 
ing, and I am convinced will continue to diminish, except we can show by fresh 
action of ours that we are still fully in accord with the exponents of Irish popu- 
lar opinion in Ireland. The proposed change of the name and administration of 
funds will doubtless have its effect if adopted, of which I have no doubt. The 
branches have been given until the 25th inst. to decide. May I ask you to have 
this application considered at once, and acquaint me with the results ? The ex- 
ecutive has not been able to pay salaries to organizers or office staff for the past 
fortnight. I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, 

' Frank Byrne, Gen. Sec' 

" Now, my Lords, the next is an entry in the minutes of the same body of 
the 5th of January. At a meeting of the executive, held 5th January, 1883, the 
following entry appears on the minutes : 

' A letter was read from the general secretary, who was still too unwell to 

be present ' 

your Lordships will have no doubt when you hear the evidence that Byrne was 
not shamming illness, but that he had been for a considerable time in ill- 
health 

' in which it was stated he had not yet received a reply to his application to Mr. 
Parnell for an advance of ^100, and that the financial position of the executive 
was very bad, the organizers being without salary for three weeks, and dealing 
generally with the business of the meeting.' 

" Now, my Lords, Mr. Parnell wrote to the Irish branch this letter on the 
9th of January, 1883. It is addressed to the hon. secretaries of the Irish Na- 
tional League, Dublin : 

' Gentlemen : — I have been requested by the executive of the National 
Land and Labor League of Great Britain to apply to you for an advance to 
them of the sum of ^100, to enable them to pay some current expenses pend- 
ing their reorganization on the lines of the Irish National League. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 129 



' I may explain that the treasurers of the late Land League were in the 
habit of making the League of Great Britain similar advances from time to time, 
and I shall be very glad if you will bring this application before the next meet- 
ing of the Organizing Committee, and say to them that I think it desirable that 
the grant should be made. 

' I beg to enclose you exchange on the Consolidated Bank of , Lim- 
ited, for ,£206:3:8, which I have received from the Newark branch of the 
League, New Jersey, and also two letters accompanying same, which I will 
thank you to have published in the Freeman's Journal, United Ireland, and The 
Nation, when publishing your next list of acknowledgments. 

' I think it would be well to have fortnightly meetings of the Organizing 
Committee on some fixed day, so that all members might know when to attend 
them, as there will probably be sufficient business for us to consider at these 
meetings. 

' I also beg to enclose a note for ^"5, which has been sent to me anony- 
mously, accompanied by the following memorandum : " To the Irish National 
League, from one who most unhappily has written, spoken, and thought evil of 
Ireland's friends." In acknowledging this sum, I shall be glad if you will also 
give the memorandum. 

' Please send a formal receipt to Mr. Mullen, whose address you will find 
in the enclosed letter, and oblige yours, very truly, Charles S. Parnell.' 

" That is on the gth. It comes before the Organizing Committee of 
the League in Dublin on the 1 7th, and this resolution is moved and carried : 

' On the motion of Mr. Thomas Sexton, seconded by Mr. J. J. Clancy, it 
was resolved, That the application of Mr. Parnell for a grant of £ 100 in aid of 
the Land and Labor League of Great Britain should be acceded to, and the treas- 
urer was empowered to forward the amount.' 

And in the cash-book of the League, under the date of the 18th January, 1883, 
appears this entry : 

' By sum voted to the Land and Labor League of Great Britain, at direc- 
tion of Mr. Parnell, ^100.' 

"And on the 23d of January Mr. Parnell writes to the secretary of the 
Dublin branch a letter of acknowledgment, thus : 

' Dear Mr. Harrington : — I have received your letter of the 20th instant 
with check for ^"ioo, which I have handed to the secretary of the Land and La- 
bor League of Great Britain, with a request that formal receipt be sent to Mr. 
Webb for same in due course, as you suggest.' 



230 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



" Mr. Webb was the treasurer of the League in Dublin. 

" Now, my Lords, there are two other letters I have to read to make this 
matter perfectly clear to your Lordships. Those are the letters of Mr. Frank 
Byrne to the executive of the English branch of the 8th of February, 1883, and 
the letter from the same Mr. Frank Byrne to Mr. Quinn, treasurer of the Eng- 
lish branch of the League, on the 10th of February, 1883. 

"It is set out at page 2887 : 

' 8th February, 1883. 

' Gentlemen : — I regret much that since I left home I have not been able 
to write to you before now, as, in addition to my lung complaint, I have been 
suffering from rheumatism in my right hand and arm, which made it impossible 
for me to write. It is much better now, but still far from being in a state to 
permit me to write much. I was, as you have no doubt been informed by Mr. 
M'Sweeney, obliged to leave suddenly by the positive orders of the doctor, and 
could not, in consequence, communicate with you previous to my departure. 
Mr. M'Sweeney will also have informed you that I received the promised check, 
;£ioo, from Mr. Parnell on the day I left London. Immediately on my arrival 
in Paris I proceeded to discharge all the liabilities for which I had authority, and 
I now enclose balance-sheet showing income and expenditure from 30th Decem- 
ber. You will see I have no account of either since 20th January, except so far 
as readding the receipt of ^100 on 23d, and cash sent to Mr. Walsh, for fort- 
night ending 20th January, and my own salary up to Saturday next. The cash 
sent to Mr. Walsh was not authorized by you, as his returns, which I now en- 
close, have not yet come before you. They are of the usual character, and I 
hope you will adopt them to-morrow night. I shall to-morrow forward to Mr. 
Quinn check or draft for amount on hand, ^35 : 17 : yi, and Mr. M'Sweeney 
will, no doubt, supply you with account of receipts and expenditure since 20th 
January. As it is impossible for me to conduct the business of the organization 
from such a distance, and as it is likely to be some weeks before I shall be fit to 
return, I would respectfully request you to relieve me for the present from the 
responsibility attached thereto, and I would also suggest that as your income at 
present is not large, that you would consider whether you are in a position to 
continue to pay a salary of an official who cannot perform his duties. While 
making this suggestion I would also remind you that my position is not an inde- 
pendent one. If not already done, I would advise the official alteration in the 
name, etc, of the organization, and its announcement to the branches immedi- 
ately. I shall be happy to hear from you in reply, and information upon any 
point you may require I shall, of course, supply at the earliest moment. 

' I am, gentlemen, yours faithfully, Frank Byrne, Gen. Sec.' 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 131 



" The other letter to Mr. Quinn is at page 2408, and is as follows: 

' 10th February, 1883. 

' My dear Quinn: — I daresay you will have heard before now that I had 
left London for a warmer climate, in accordance with the positive orders of the 
doctor. I was obliged to leave suddenly, or I should have tried to see you be- 
fore my departure. 

' I am glad to say that already I find a considerable improvement. The 
doctor thinks, however, that as soon as I am sufficiently strong I should take a 
long sea voyage, and he recommends America. I did not like the idea, but if 
my restoration to health depends upon it, of course I must go. 

' I enclose you a check for £35 117:7, the amount of cash in my hands be- 
longing to the executive. At the last settling we had, you held a sum of 
£1 : 6 : 1, so that you will now have £37 : 3 : 8 in hand. 

' If you can spare the time, and have the inclination, you might drop me 
a few lines here. 

' I wish you would attend next executive meeting and inform them of re- 
ceipt of this, or else write them. 

' I am, dear Quinn, yours faithfully, Frank Byrne.' 

" My Lords, I have a serious comment to make upon this allegation. Let 
me remind your Lordships of what the allegation is : 

' It was an opportune remittance from Mr. Parnell himself on the 23d Janu- 
ary which enabled Byrne to escape to France. That he should have supplied 
Byrne with funds is quite in harmony with the tone and purport of his letter on 
the Phoenix Park murders. The question is not one of opinion, but fact. If 
Mr. Parnell supplied Byrne with money to leave the country in January, 1883, 
the significance of the action cannot be obscured by any casuistry or subtleties or 
argumentative sleight-of-hand.' 

" What authority had they for making that original statement ? They had 
not, we have been told, I have no doubt truly told upon his instructions by the 
Attorney-General — they had not known of the letter to Quinn the treasurer un- 
til the eve of the O'Donnell v. Walter trial. They had not any knowledge of 
the letter to the executive until during the time of the O'Donnell v. Walter trial, 
and it comes, says Mr. Macdonald, to him from what quarter he knows not, in an 
envelope without a name or anything to identify its sender. If, then, he had 
neither the letter to the executive nor the letter to Quinn the treasurer, where 
was the information upon which this grave, this wicked charge was based ? Were 
the representatives of the Times receiving information from traitors in the em- 



132 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

ployment of the Land League, and were they daring, were they venturing upon 
such information, from such tainted sources, to launch without inquiry such ac- 
cusations of defamation against the character of public men ? 

" Now, my Lords, that the story has been told, what does it disclose ? A 
plain, straightforward, thoroughly innocent transaction, in which Mr. Parnell 
is merely made in the first instance the medium of communication with the 
Dublin branch) and in the next instance he is made the medium of communi- 
cation from the Dublin branch to pass on a cheque to Mr. Byrne. 

" But I go further, and I say that if they had had in their possession both 
these letters, not only would it have been no foundation for the charge, but it 
ought to have conveyed to them, if their minds and judgments were not wholly 
blurred, and their sense of right feeling and discretion wholly gone, it ought to 
have conveyed to them, one or other or both of the letters, that that was a per- 
fectly honest, open, and above-board transaction, free of the imputation of 
guilty connivance with escape of a guilty criminal." 

It was February 20th when Richard Pigott was called to the witness chair. 
The examination by the Attorney-General was very brief ; and then Sir Charles 
Russell began one of the ablest cross-examinations in history. In his very first 
question or request he almost proved that the letters were forgeries, and that 
Pigott was the forger. He asked the witness to write several words, among 
them " hesitancy " and "likelihood." When this was done it was found and 
admitted by the court that both of these words were misspelt in exactly the 
same way as were they in the forged letters. The wretched man lied and pre- 
varicated in the most open way, until finally, under the pressure of the great 
lawyer's cross-examination, he confessed that he lied. His correspondence with 
Mr. Egan, in which he endeavored to blackmail that gentleman in the sum of 
^500, was then read to him ; but the most dramatic part of the trial came 
when, in the midst of his cross-examination, Sir Charles Russell called upon 
Mr. Wemyss Reid, who produced the correspondence that had passed between 
Pigott and Mr. Forster. From these letters it was distinctly shown to the court 
that even when Pigott was posing as a Nationalist journalist, he was in com- 
munication with Dublin Castle. He proposed to the Chief Secretary that his 
newspaper should be subsidized by the Government. Mr. Forster refused ; but 
sent him a personal loan. One loan was followed by another and another, until 
finally the chief of the Government of Ireland refused to make him any further 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. ^33 



advances unless he could guarantee the repayment of them. Then Pigott had 
resort to threats and anonymous letters. 

As these letters were being read " the face of Pigott was a painful sight 
that will never efface itself from the recollection of those who saw it. His 
mouth was open, his jaw hung, his face was alternately ghastly and flushed ; he 
looked the picture of villainy at bay as the terrible record of his awful life rose 
thus before him." Finally, on Saturday, after he had been under cross-exam- 
ination for three days, he went to Mr. Labouchere, and in the presence of Mr. 
George A. Sala he signed a confession of having forged every one of the letters 
that had been produced by the Times — not alone those of Mr. Parnell, but also 
those purporting to have been written by Mr. Davitt, Mr. Egan, and Mr. James 
O'Kelly. 

He was to have been re-cross-examined on Tuesday morning ; but he had 
escaped from the ordeal by flight. He was next heard from from the Hotel 
des deux Mondes in Paris, and immediately warrants were issued for his arrest. 
From Paris he wandered to Madrid. Here, at the Hotel Ambajadores, under 
the name of Ronald Ponsonby, he was discovered by the police. An inter- 
preter, whom he had engaged, told him that a policeman wished to see him. 
The unfortunate man became unnerved, but he soon recovered himself and said 
that he would see the officer. The moment the police officer entered the room, 
Pigott stepped back, took a large revolver from a hand-bag, and, before the 
officer, who had divined his intention, had time to arrest him, Pigott placed the 
muzzle of the revolver in his mouth and drew the trigger. Death was instan- 
taneous. He fell to the ground a horribly mutilated corpse. 

The effect of this confession and suicide was most marvellous ; the case of 
the Times was naturally withdrawn — but not until they had exhibited the dying 
expression of their intense hatred of Ireland and her leaders. The peoples and 
press of every nation congratulated Mr. Parnell upon the failure of the infamous 
conspiracy which had been levelled against him, and the Tories were in a con- 
dition of abject despair. On March 1st there occurred a scene in the House of 
Commons which is absolutely unparalleled. Late in the evening Mr. Parnell 
rose in his seat in the House ; but he could not proceed farther than the word 
" Sir"; for immediately every one of the Liberals, including Mr. Gladstone, Mr. 
Morley, and Sir William Harcourt, as well as the Irish members, arose and 
cheered him wildly for several minutes. Mr. Parnell stood unmoved, save that 



134 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

his face became a little more pallid than usual. No such paeon of congratula- 
tory enthusiasm ever sounded in that historic hall. But I must away from the hor- 
ror of this Tzmes-P'igott-Tory Government conspiracy. And before returning 
to 1885, I think it not inopportune to withdraw the reader from this awful 
Pigott episode and invite him to read the following tribute to Mr. Parnell, which 
was written after his death by Mr. John Stuart — a Gladstonian Englishman — 
and which was furnished to me by Mrs. Fox, of Philadelphia — Mrs. Parnell's 
dearest friend in America : 

" Nobler, more pure — not greater men have lived 
Than this Tribune erstwhile of Ireland's race, 
And Death has come, yet almost late, to save 
His brilliant fame and honor patriot deeds. 
For now will strife be hushed and all men join 
To praise the Leader long esteemed and loved 
For patience, wisdom, courage, and success. 
Rivals no more John Dillon, Davitt brave, 
McCarthy and O'Brien, Sexton too, 
May gather round his grave and breathe out words 
Of burning eloquence — example find 
In that keen, daring knight, who unity 
Evolved from chaos, victorious might 
From weakness sore. 

Ingratitude is base 
And common as 'tis mean. Green Erin's page 
Was darkly stained when many he had served 
Forsook his flag and others conscience sold 
At bidding of the priests when fifteen years 
Of toilsome service, bold attack and wise 
Defense were marred by one intrigue. The sin 
Was gross, but more unworthy he or they 
Who stayed the blow till other crimes alleged 
Awoke th' attention of the world, at last 
Were proved false, and damage justly paid. 

Who in his prime has passed away had spent 
His means, his brains, his strength in patriot zeal. 
Long years a lone and weakly man, he late 
Displayed a giant strength till Nature made 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. ^35 



Her sure demand. Where lives his like and where 
Shall Moses find his Joshua? The mantles 
Heroes wear fit them alone ; we shall see 
No second Gladstone, nor e'en for First Lord 
Smith will fitting substitute be found. 

Parnell shall rank in history not least 
In trio Grattan and O'Connell form : 
With Kossuth, Garibaldi, Washington — 
With men who nations found and peoples weld 
Shall he be named. The dark, sad cloud which showed 
Him man of mortal mould can only dim 
The brightness of that sun which comfort brought 
To countless homes, which broke Coercion's rod 
And after fierce oppressive ages long 
Britain compelled to heed his country's claims, 
Her wrongs redress and tardy justice mete. 

Posterity shall say : Then lived a man 
Of one unchangeable and stern resolve, 
The Uncrowned King, calm, silent, and restrained, 
Passionless yet passionate, slow but sure. 
Too short his life, yet long enough his work 
To do. That work we see, his name we love, 
And generations in the Womb of Time 
Home Rule Parnell shall laud. 
"October 7, 1 89 1. John Stuart." 

A peculiar example of the foresight — the political foresight — of Mr. Parnell, 
occurred in connection with the famous division upon Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's 
amendment to the second reading of Mr. Gladstone's Budget, on June 8, 1885. 
This Liberal government was supposed to be the strongest of the century; but 
in his Budget Mr. Gladstone proposed to increase the duties on beer and spirits 
to make up the amount necessary to meet the expenses of the campaign in the 
Soudan. No howl of discontent went up from the English benches or from the 
English people when the Prime Minister taxed Ireland unconstitutionally ; but 
Mr. Parnell knew the temper of the English public ; the mass-meeting of 40,000 
people to protest against this increased tax should have warned the ministry 
and indicated the coming storm. It did not. The Irish leader alone was 
weather-wise, and so confident was he that a concerted effort would defeat the 



136 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Government and prevent the passage of their proposed extension of the Crimes 
Act, that with his own hand he sent over thirty telegrams to his followers who 
were absent in Ireland, urging them to be present at the division upon Sir Michael 
Hicks- Beach's amendment. As a result, the ministry was defeated by a vote of 
264 to 252 — the 39 Parnellites won their battle against coercion. The Tories 
were frantic with delight ; they stood upon their seats cheering and waving their 
hats and handkerchiefs ; but above the din could be heard the shouts of those 
who won the battle — the Irish party — reminding the defeated ministry of why 
they were in the minority by cries of " Coercion," " Buckshot," " Myles Joyce," 
etc. Mr. Parnell was alone unmoved. He alone had foreseen it — in the silent 
vigils of many a night he had arranged his plans, and he looked on with a quiet 
smile upon his face at the consummation of his prophecy that "a united Irish 
party can hold in its hand the destinies of England's Governments." 
On the day following the defeat of the ministry, Mr. Parnell said : 
" The result of the division is a consequence of the policy which the Irish 
party has adopted during the last four years of this Parliament — to turn out the 
Government at any cost, as a lesson for all future governments with regard to the 
determination of the Irish people not to submit to unconstitutional government 
or coercion. The Irish members have followed out this policy in the most de- 
termined fashion. They have pushed the Government very closely upon many 
divisions, and beaten them more than once (though, unhappily, not on occasions 
on which the Government were obliged to resign). Members of the party have 
seldom failed to turn up at critical divisions, where the fate of the Government 
was involved, in larger proportionate numbers than either of the other two par- 
ties. We should have succeeded in expelling the ministry from office long ago 
if it had not been for the secession of twenty members of our party who were 
elected on the same principles as we, but who have voted with the Government 
as constantly as we have voted against them. The pleasure and advantage of 
that vote to us is increased by the fact that we have saved almost the only re- 
maining Irish industry from a burden of ,£500,000 a year. We confidently an- 
ticipate the much more important additional result that we have not only got 
rid of a coercionist government, but in all probability we have put an end to co- 
ercion in Ireland forever." 

Before the downfall of the Gladstone ministry a bill had passed through 
Parliament enfranchising the Irish people. Previous to this (1885), there had 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 137 



been a remarkable disproportion of electors in Ireland to the population as com- 
pared with either England or Scotland. The proportion was, that taking the 
boroughs and counties together, two men out of every five had votes in Eng- 
land, whereas only one in every five had a vote for parliamentary purposes. For 
this reason a proper representation of the will of the people in Parliament was, 
to say the least, doubtful. That it was impossible will be shown by the result of 
the election of 1885, under the new Franchise Act. But before giving a risume 
of the result of the 1885 election in Ireland, I shall draw some parallels between 
the voting powers of England and Ireland before this Franchise Act became law. 

The eastern division of Staffordshire had a population of 138,824 ; electors 
1 1,275. County of Dublin, population 145,628 ; electors 4,982. So that with a 
larger population in Dublin the number of electors previous to 1885 was about a 
third of those in the constituency of a nearly corresponding size. So, Northumber- 
land, South Division, compared with Limerick County ; Lancashire, Northeastern 
Division, compared with the county of Mayo ; Yorkshire, North Riding, com- 
pared with the county of Down. So that taking those four counties respectively 
in England and in Ireland, the figures stand thus : population of the four Eng- 
lish counties 728,881 ; electors previous to 1885, 53,421 ; total of the four Irish 
counties, population 754,042 ; electors 26,402. So that with a larger population 
in those four Irish counties there are 26,402 voters, as against 53,421 in the four 
English counties with a somewhat smaller population. In the case of the bor- 
oughs also it is remarkable. Sheffield with a population of 284,410, electors 
43,350; Dublin with a population of 273,282, electors 13,880, less than a third, 
between a third and fourth. So, Blackburn as compared with Cork ; Chatham 
as compared with Limerick ; Newcastle-on-Tyne as compared with Belfast ; 
Aylesbury as compared with Londonderry ; Berwick-on-Tweed as compared 
with Kilkenny ; Brecon as compared with New Ross. The results of those 
seven boroughs in England as compared with the seven boroughs in Ireland are 
these: total population 626,579 ; electorate in England 95,150; in Ireland, the 
population 685,680; electorate 44,311. 

Previous to 1885, as I have already explained, Mr. Parnell had a parliament- 
ary following of 39. That was under the old Franchise Act of 1867, which 
practically confined the electorate of a great many parts of Ireland to the land- 
lord class, and their dependents. Now, for the first time, was given to the peo- 
ple of Ireland the opportunity of proving to the Government of England and to 



138 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



the world, whether or not they approved of the policy of Mr. Parnell and the 
Irish Nationalist leaders who preceded him. 

This was the vote in the contested districts : 



CONSTITUENCIES. 



Carlow County 

Cavan, West 

Clare, East 

West 

Cork, East 

" Mid 

" North 

" South 

" Southeast 

" West 

" City (undivided) 

Donegal, North 

South 

Dublin County, North 

Dublin City, Col. Green 

" Harbor Division. 
" " St. Patrick's. . . 

Galway, East, County 

City 

Kerry, West 

" South 

East 

Kildare, North 

Kilkenny, North 

" South 

King's County, Tullamore 

Birr 

Leitrim, North 

" South 

Limerick, City , 

Longford, North 

" South 

Mayo, West 

" South 

Monaghan, South , 

Queen's County, Leix , 

" " Ossory 

Roscommon, North 

" South 

Sligo, North 

" South 

Tipperary, North 

Mid 

" South.., 

" East.. 

Waterford, West County 

" East County 

City 

Westmeath, North 

" South 

Wexford, North 

Wicklow, West 

East 



PARNELLITE 


ORANGE 


PARNELLITE 


VOTE. 


VOTE. 


MAJORITY. 


480I 


751 


4050 


6425 


1779 


4646 


6224 


289 


5935 


6763 


289 


6474 


43H 


266 


4048 


5033 


106 


4927 


4982 


I02 


4880 


4823 


195 


4628 


4620 


66l 


3959 


3920 


373 


3547 


{ 6682 


1456 


5226 


J6497 


1392 


5105 


4597 


962 


3635 


5055 


1369 


3686 


7560 


1425 


6i35 


6548 


1518 


5030 


6717 


1628 


5089 


533o 


1 162 


4168 


4886 


353 


4513 


1335 


164 


1171 


2607 


262 


2345 


2742 


133 


2609 


3169 


3° 


3139 


3169 


467 


2701 


4084 


174 


3910 


4088 


222 


3166 


3700 


323 


3377 


3408 


760 


2648 


46S6 


541 


4H5 


4775 


489 


4286 


3098 


635 


2463 


2592 


163 


2422 


3046 


321 


2725 


4790 


131 


4659 


4900 


75 


4825 


4375 


963 


3412 


374° 


507 


3233 


3959 


293 


3666 


6102 


366 


5736 


6033 


338 


5695 


5216 


772 


.] /[/[/] 


5150 


54i 


4609 


4789 


252 


4537 


3805 


255 


355° 


3572 


122 


345° 


4064 


I96 


3868 


3746 


359 


3387 


3291 


3 J 4 


2977 


2308 


250 


2058 


3648 


255 


3393 


3618 


200 


34i8 


6531 


817 


57i4 


3721 


871 


2850 


3385 


1000 


2385 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



139 



Then follows a second class, where the majorities were not so large. But 
in all the majorities in those cases, including several Ulster counties — Donegal, 
Fermanagh North and South, Londonderry South, Monaghan North, Mid 
Tyrone, East Tyrone, and South Tyrone — the majority ranges from 1,943 to 
551, with one exception, and that is in South Tyrone, where the contest was 
very close, and the majority was 52. 



CONSTITUENCIES. 



Donegal, East 

Dublin County, South 

Dublin City, Stephen's Green 

Fermanagh, North 

" South 

Londonderry, South 

Monaghan, North 

Tyrone, Mid 

" East 

" South 



PARNELLITE 


ORANGE 


PARNELLITE 


VOTE. 


VOTE. 


MAJORITY. 


4089 


2992 


IO97 


5114 


3736 


1378 


5277 


3334 


1943 


32S5 


2822 


433 


3574 


2l8[ 


'393 


4723 


4158 


56S 


4055 


2685 


1370 


4299 


2657 


1642 


3919 


3368 


551 


3434 


3382 


52 



There were, besides these, a number of uncontested elections, and the final 
result showed that, including Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who had been elected for the 
Scotland Division of Liverpool, the Parnellite party had now a voting strength 
in the new Parliament of 86, having secured 85 seats in Ireland out of a total of 
103. Thus spoke the people of Ireland : By a representative majority of about 
five to one they declared for the policy of Mr. Parnell, and forever refuted the 
boasts of England's ministers and England's press that "Mr. Parnell and his 
party did not represent the majority of the people of Ireland." And it also 
proves, as says Bentham in his " Theory of Legislation," that 

" If associations spring up in a country powerful enough to intimidate its 
government with all its executive forces at its back, and with all its influence, 
and too powerful to be put down — if and when a great majority of the nation 
is seen on one side and its government on another — it is a pretty clear indication 
that the general discontent of that country is well founded." 

I shall be pardoned for going back a period of two years for the purpose of 
giving an incident, also proving Mr. Parnell's foreknowledge and statesmanship. 
I ask to be pardoned inasmuch as that it is an incident personal to myself, but 
which importantly concerned the welfare of the Fishing industry of Ireland. By 
a resolution of the Royal Commission I was invited to read a paper on Irish 



140 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Fisheries before an International Congress comprising the Ministers of Fisher- 
ies of the different countries represented at the International Fisheries Exhibi- 
tion of 1883 and the general public. In this paper I attacked the Government 
for their neglect of the Fisheries of Ireland in comparison with their action con- 
cerning those of England and Scotland, and particularly as to their infamous 
neglect in the matter of Fishery piers. Sir Thomas F. Brady and the late John 
A. Blake, M.P., advised me to, if possible, secure the attendance of Mr. Parnell 
at the conference in order to support my demand for Government assistance for 
the purposes referred to. I at once telegraphed to Mr. Parnell, asking him to 
make an appointment with me on the subject, and two hours afterward I re- 
ceived the following reply : " Meet me, lobby, House, 3 o'clock to-morrow, 
Saturday." I brought with me the points which it was considered advisable he 
should be asked to approve. 

As the House does not sit on Saturday, and, in consequence of the recent 
explosion of an "infernal machine" in the vault, a rule was passed making it 
very difficult to gain access to the lobby on any day, but particularly on Satur- 
day, the policeman at the end of Westminster Hall leading to the Houses of 
Parliament refused to allow me to pass. I showed him Mr. Parnell's telegram, 
but this seemed to make him suspicious, and he said that the thing was a hoax 
and that no members were in the House. However, I succeeded in persuading 
him that it was all right — at a cost of half a crown — and I went into the lobby. 
It was then within five minutes of three, and I was alone — the only occupant of 
these historic halls. Suddenly the clock pointed to the hour of 3, and on the 
moment Mr. Parnell came through the members' private door and greeted me 
warmly. 

He at once entered into the Fisheries question ; I read for him the por- 
tions of the paper on which, in the opinion of Mr. Blake and Sir Thomas Brady, 
it was desirable to have his opinion and ask for his co-operation at the confer- 
ence. He did not say a word for several minutes when I had done. He seemed 
to be lost in thought, and utterly oblivious of my presence. Suddenly he turned 
to me and said: "At what hour on the 12th (July) is the conference to take 
place ? " 

I replied that it was fixed for four o'clock, and then he said : 

" It is an important matter ; but it will be impossible for me to be present. 
The second reading of the Suez Canal bill will be then on, and it is imperative 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. \^\ 



for us to watch it. However, you can tell your friends Blake and William 
O'Brien, that I would wish them to attend the conference, if it is at all practicable." 

A few minutes afterward our interview ended ; Mr. Blake attended the 
conference and delivered an address following the reading of the paper, and al- 
most at that same hour, in the House of Commons, Mr. Parnell and the other 
members of the Irish party were busy obstructing one of the most iniquitous 
acts of English spoliation — introduced by Mr. Goschen, — to rob the stockholders 
of the Suez Canal Company. But, all through his parliamentary career, Mr. 
Parnell's estimate of the probable results of parliamentary issues, as happened on 
that famous 8th of June, 1885, have been the marvel of friends and political op- 
ponents alike. 

An amendment to the Queen's Speech of 1886, which was proposed by Mr. 
Jesse Collings, was carried in spite of the most violent opposition ; a general 
election was held, and upon the platform of Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Glad- 
stone was once more returned to power. And now began the supremest effort 
of the Prime Minister's life; he was pledged to bring in a Home Rule Bill ; 
many of the members of his cabinet were uncompromisingly opposed to it, and 
finally the Marquis of Hartington, Sir Geo. O. Trevelyan, and Mr. Joseph Cham- 
berlain ratted from their leader. 

On April 8th, despite the disaffection of his chief supporters, Mr. Glad- 
stone brought in his Home Rule Bill. When he entered the House — which 
was packed to suffocation— a stirring incident happened : " The whole Liberal 
party (with the exceptions I have indicated) and every Irish member sprang to 
their feet and cheered him enthusiastically." 

The main provisions of the bill, as described by Mr. Sydney Buxton, are 
as follows : 

" The bill provides for the constitution of an Irish Parliament, sitting in 
Dublin with the Queen at its head. 

" The Parliament, which is to be quinquennial, is to consist of 309 members, 
divided into two * orders,' 103 members in the ' first order,' and 206 in the ' second 
order.' 

"The 'first order' is to consist of such or all of the 28 Irish representative 
peers as choose to serve ; the remaining members to be 'elective.' At the end 
of 30 years the rights of peerage members will lapse, and the whole of the ' first 
order ' will be elective. 



142 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" The elective members will sit for 10 years ; every five years one-half their 
number will retire, but are eligible for re-election. They do not vacate their 
seats on a dissolution. 

" They will be elected by constituencies subsequently to be formed. The 
elective member himself must possess a property qualification equivalent to an 
income of ^200 a year. The franchise is a restricted one, the elector having to 
possess or occupy land of a net annual value of ^25. 

" The ' second order ' is to be elected on the existing franchise, and by the 
existing constituencies, the representation of each being doubled. For the first 
Parliament, the Irish members now sitting in the House of Commons will, ex- 
cept such as may resign, constitute one-half the members of the ' second order ' of 
the new House. 

"The two orders shall sit and deliberate together, and, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, shall vote together, the majority deciding. 

" If, however, on any question (other than a bill) relating to legislation, or 
to the regulations and rules of the House, the majority of either order demand 
a separate vote, a separate vote of each order shall be taken. If the decision of 
the two orders be different, the matter shall be decided in the negative. 

" The Lord-Lieutenant has power given him to arrange for the procedure 
at the first sitting, the election of Speaker, and other minor matters for carrying 
the Act into effect. 

" If a bill, or any part of a bill, is lost by the disagreement of the two or- 
ders voting separately, the matter in dispute shall be considered as vetoed, or 
lost, for a period of three years, or until the next dissolution of the Legislative 
Body, if longer than three years. After that time, if the question be again 
raised, and the bill or provision be adopted by the second order and negatived 
by the first, it shall be submitted to the Legislative Body as a whole, both orders 
shall vote together, and the question shall be decided by the simple majority. 
The bill then, if within the statutory power of the Parliament, and unless vetoed 
by the Crown, passes into law. 

"The Lord-Lieutenant — who, as Lord-Lieutenant, will not be the repre- 
sentative of any party, and will not quit office with the outgoing English Gov- 
ernment, and who in future need not necessarily be a Protestant — is appointed 
by the Crown, and will represent the Crown in Ireland. Neither his office nor 
his functions can be altered by the Irish Parliament. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 143 



" The responsible Executive in Ireland will be constituted in the same manner 
as that in England. The leader of the majority will be called upon by the Lord- 
Lieutenant, as representing the Queen, to form a Government responsible to the 
Irish Parliament. It will stand and fall by votes of that Parliament. 

" The Queen, just as in the case of the Imperial Parliament, retains the right 
— to be exercised through the Lord-Lieutenant — of giving or withholding her 
assent to bills, and can dissolve or summon Parliament when she pleases ; she 
will probably, as in England, exercise the latter function, and as a rule the former, 
on the advice of the responsible Irish Executive. 

" All constitutional questions which may arise, as to whether the Irish Par- 
liament has exceeded its powers, will be referred to, and decided by, the Judicial 
Committee of the Privy Council ; their decision will be final, and the Lord- 
Lieutenant will veto any bill judged by them to contain provisions in excess of 
the powers of the Irish Legislature, and such a bill will be void. 

" The prerogatives of the Crown are untouched. The following matters re- 
main intact in the hands of the Imperial Parliament : The dignity of, and suc- 
cession to, the Crown ; the making of peace or war ; all foreign and colonial 
relations ; the questions of international law, or violation of treaties ; naturaliza- 
tion ; matters relating to trade, navigation, and quarantine, beacons, lighthouses, 
etc.; foreign postal and telegraph service ; coinage, weights and measures ; copy- 
right and patents ; questions of treason, alienage ; the creation of titles of honor. 
The Imperial Parliament is, moreover, to keep in its own hands the army, navy, 
militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces ; is responsible for the de- 
fense of the realm ; and may erect all needful buildings or defenses for military 
and naval purposes. 

"In addition, the Irish Parliament is not permitted to make laws estab- 
lishing or endowing any religion, or prohibiting in any way religious freedom, 
by imposing a disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious be- 
lief. Nor may they prejudicially affect the right of any child to avail itself of 
the 'conscience clause' at any school it may attend; nor of the private right 
of establishing and maintaining any particular form of denominational education. 

" It cannot, without the leave of the Privy Council of England, or the 
assent of the Corporation itself, in any way impair the rights, property, or priv- 
ileges of any body created and existing under Royal Charter or Act of Par- 
liament. 



144 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" For a time, at all events, the Customs and Excise duties are to be levied 
by officers appointed, as now, by the British Treasury. 

" With these exceptions, all other matters, legislative and administrative, 
are left absolutely in the power, and to the discretion, of the Irish Parliament 
and its executive government. 

" It will be responsible for law and order, though the Imperial Parliament, 
by retaining the military forces, holds the ultimate power. It can raise and 
pay a police force — as in England, under local control. 

"The responsible Government will have the appointment of the Judges 
(to be life appointments, as in England), and of all the other officials throughout 
the kingdom. The Parliament can make or vary courts of law, legal powers, 
or authorities, etc. 

" On the recommendation of the responsible Government, the Parliament 
can levy such internal taxes as they please (with the exception of Customs and 
Excise), and can apply the proceeds to such purposes as they think fit. They 
can raise loans, and undertake public works of every sort. They can manage 
their own post-offices, telegraphs, and post-office savings-banks. 

"They can create such local bodies as they choose. They can regulate 
education : in a word, they will have the power of legislating on all local Irish 
matters. 

" After the first election, they can alter any matter affecting the consti- 
tution or election of the 'second order'; the franchise, the constituencies, the 
mode of election, the system of registration, the laws relating to corrupt and 
illegal practices, the privileges and immunities of the legislative body and of its 
members, etc. 

"To prevent any breach of continuity, existing laws will remain in force 
until altered or repealed by the new Parliament. 

" All existing rights of civil servants and other officials at present in the 
employ of the Irish Government are carefully guarded. In order to preserve 
the continuity of Civil Government, they will continue to hold office at the 
same salary they now receive, and to perform the same or analogous duties, 
unless, from incompatibility of temper, or from motives of economy, the Irish 
Government desire their retirement, when they will receive their pension. In 
any case if, at the end of two years, they wish to retire, they can do so, and will 
be then entitled to a pension as though their office had been abolished. 



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HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 145 



" The judges, and certain permanent officials, can only be retired, or al- 
lowed to retire, by ' the Crown,' and they will then receive their pension as 
though they had served their full time. 

"The existing rights of the constabulary and police to pay, pension, etc., 
are preserved. 

" All these pensions become a charge on the Irish Treasury, but are further 
guaranteed by the English Treasury. 

" It is not intended that the Irish representative Peers should any longer 
sit in the House of Lords, nor the Irish members in the House of Commons, 
but that Ireland (with the assent of her present representatives) should be prac- 
tically unrepresented at Westminster. 

" The Act constituting the Irish Parliament cannot be altered in any way, 
except by an Act passed by the Imperial Parliament, and assented to by the 
Irish Parliament ; or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, passed after there 
have been summoned back to it, for that especial purpose, 28 Irish represent- 
ative Peers, and 103 'second order' members." 

The Financial arrangements are as follows : 

" The imposition and collection of Customs duties and of Excise duties, so 
far as these are immediately connected with Customs duties, will remain in the 
hands of the British Treasury. All other taxes will be imposed and collected 
under the authority of the Irish Parliament. The proceeds of these latter taxes 
will be paid into the Irish Treasury ; the proceeds of the Customs and Excise 
to a special account of the British Treasury. 

"From these receipts, certain deductions are first to be made for the Irish 
contribution to Imperial Expenditure, etc., and the balance is then to be paid 
over to the Irish Treasury. 

" Ireland is to pay one-fifteenth as her portion of the whole existing Impe- 
rial charge for debt (^22,000,000 a year), representing a capital sum of ^48,- 
000,000, and in addition a small sinking fund ; and one-fifteenth of the normal 
charge for Army and Navy (,£25,000,000), and for Imperial Civil charges 
(,£1,650,000). In addition, until she supersedes the present police force, she 
is to pay £ 1,000,000 a year (or less if the cost be less) toward the cost of the 
Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin police. 



146 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

" Thus the Irish proportion of Imperial expenditure will be as follows : 
Debt . . . . . . ;£ 1,466,000 

Sinking fund .... 360,000 



,£1,826,000 

Army and Navy . . . 1,666,000 

Civil expenditure . . . 110,000 



,£3,602,000 
Constabulary and police . . 1,000,000 



£4,602,000 

"This is the maximum amount payable, and it cannot be increased for 
thirty years, when the question of contribution can be again considered. 

" On the other hand, the amount can be reduced. (1) If in any year the 
charge for the army and navy, or for the Imperial Civil Service, is less than 
fifteen times the amount of the Irish contribution, then the Irish charge will be 
reduced proportionately. (2) If the cost of the constabulary or police fall below 
;£i, 000,000 a year, then the difference will be saved by the Irish Exchequer. 

"The estimated revenue from Irish customs and excise customs, duties, 
amounts to ,£6,180,000 annually. From this is to be deducted, by the English 
Treasury, a sum not exceeding four per cent, for cost of collection, leaving a 
net amount of ,£5,933,000. 

" The debtor and creditor account, as between England and Ireland, will 
then stand thus : 



Expenditure. 
For Imperial purposes £3,602,000 
Constabulary, etc. . 1,000,000 

Collection of Customs and 

Excise, maximum 4 per 

cent. . . . 247,000 



£4, 849,000 



Receipts. 
Customs and Excise . ^6,180,000 



;£6, 180,000 



Leaving a balance of £1, 33 1,000 to be handed over by England to the Irish 
Exchequer. 

" The Irish Government will take over all loans due to the British Treas- 
ury and advanced for Irish purposes, and shall pay the British Treasury an an- 
nual sum equivalent to three per cent, interest on the amount, with repayment 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. H? 



in thirty years. The total amount outstanding is some six millions, and the 
receipts and disbursements of the Irish Government under this head will about 
balance. The balance of the Irish Church surplus fund — about £20,000 a 
year — is to be handed over to the Irish Government. 

" The following will show the further receipts and expenditure of the Irish 
Government, as estimated by Mr. Gladstone on the basis of existing expend- 
iture and taxation, and may be put in the form of a balance-sheet : 



Expenditure. 
Irish civil charges . £2,510,000 
Collection of revenue, etc. 587,000 
Balance, surplus . 404,000 



£3,501,000 



Revenue. 

Repaid by England . £1,331,000 

Stamps . . . 600,000 

Income-tax, at Zd. . 550,000 
Other sources of revenue 

—Post-office, etc. . 1,020,000 



£3,501,000 



" This gives a surplus of £404,000 to start with. But in addition, great 
savings of expenditure can be, and ought to be, made in the Irish civil charges 
and collection of revenue. Per head of the population they are now double 
what they are in England, and at least £300,000 or £400,000 should be saved. 
In addition, after a time, the cost of the police ought to fall at least £200,000 
or £300,000 below the million allotted to that purpose. 

" Thus, with reasonable economy, the surplus at the disposal of the Irish 
Government ought to amount to some £1,000,000 a year — a sum which 
will enable it readily to borrow money for public wants and for public im- 
provements." 

This bill was defeated on June 7th by a majority of 30, and a few days 
afterward Mr. Gladstone announced that the Ministry had decided to appeal 
from Parliament to the country ; and thus came another general election. The 
result of this election was that out of a total of 2,554,669 votes the Gladston- 
ians received 1,238,342, and the Unionists (the combination of Tories and dis- 
senting Liberals) 1,316,327, and the most curious government that ever held 
power in England took up the reins, pledged to oppose Home Rule for Ire- 
land, or, what they described it, "the disintegration of the Empire." This 
Parliament has been aptly called "the Parliament of broken pledges"; it is in 
power to-day, and it is this same Ministry who backed up the Times in the no- 
torious Parnell- Times case, to which I have already devoted many pages. 




CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Parnell and the Unionist Parliament — Renewal of Evictions — The Plan of Cam- 
paign — The Ponsonby Estate — Mr. Balfour as Chief Secretary— The Mitchelstown 
Murders— The Coercion Act of July 17, 1887— Imprisonment of William O'Brien and 
John Mandeville— John Mandeville's Death, and Debates, etc., relating to it. 

iS it was feared that the action of the Land Judges, appointed in 1881, 
might jeopardize the position of the Irish tenantry and perhaps bring 
about another agrarian crisis, Mr. Parnell asked the Coalition or 
Unionist-Tory government to name a day to discuss the state of affairs in Ire- 
land. There was the usual amount of dissent and obstruction to anything that 
the Irish leader might propose to vindicate and ameliorate the condition of his 
countrymen ; but finally he was granted permission, and he brought in a bill, of 
which the following is the most important clause : 

" In the case of any holding subject to statutory conditions within the mean- 
ing of the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, where the statutory term was fixed 
prior to the thirty-first December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, 
if, on the application of the tenant of such holding, it is proved to the satisfac- 
tion of the Irish Land Commission, hereinafter called the Court, — 

" (a). That half the rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand 

eight hundred and eighty-six in respect of such holding, and 

half of any antecedent arrears have been paid ; and 

" (V). That the tenant is unable to discharge the remainder of such 

rent or arrears without loss of his holding or deprivation of 

the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking thereof ; 

the Court may make an order for such an abatement of the rent of such holding 

as may seem to them just and expedient. Such abatement shall apply to the 

rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, 

to the antecedent arrears thereto, if any, and to the rent which would have been 

payable in the following year." 

Mr. Gladstone, who was in Bavaria at the time, hurried home to support 

Mr. Parnell's measure. He had now gone back on all his previous acts and 
(148) 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 149 



utterances, and he was in duty bound to defend his new policy — and no matter 
what I shall have to say of him afterward, I feel that, as an Irishman, I am bound 
in duty to acknowledge the great efforts and services which Mr. Gladstone gave 
for Ireland during the last few years. But it was unavailing. Mr. Parnell's bill 
was defeated by a vote of 297 to 202. 

The anti-Home Rule or Unionist Ministry, in reply to all questions, simply 
said : " You must obey the law " — whether you are able to or not, and if you do 
not obey it, we* shall enforce it at the bayonet point. It became plain that, to 
save the farmers from wholesale eviction during the coming winter, some course 
of action was necessary ; and to meet the emergency the leaders then in Ireland 
started the scheme known as the " Plan of Campaign." It is well to state here 
that Mr. Parnell was never strictly " in touch " with this movement ; but it was 
expedient in the emergency of the moment, therefore he did not directly dis- 
countenance it. 

The text of the Plan of Campaign was published in United Ireland on 
October 23, 1886. It said: "Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. 
That the landlords will press for them, let the rejection of Mr. Parnell's bill 
testify. A fight during the coming winter is therefore inevitable, and it be- 
hooves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten of experience." Then 
the writer laid down the course of action which should be adopted. The tenants 
were to meet by estates. The priest was to be asked to take the chair, or some 
tenant remarkable for firmness of character. A committee was to be appointed, 
consisting of the chairman and six other members, to be called the managing com- 
mittee. This committee was to gather a half-year's rent from the tenants. Every 
one of the tenants was to pledge himself : (1). To abide by the decision of the 
majority ; (2). To hold no communication with the landlord or his agents, ex- 
cept in the presence of the body of the tenantry ; and (3). To accept no settlement 
which was not given to every tenant on the estate. " On the gale day," went 
on the Plan, "the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a body. If the 
agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no account confer with him 
individually, but depute the chairman to act as their spokesman, and acquaint 
him of the reduction which they require." If the agent refused the half-year's 
rent with the reduction which the tenants thought fair and proper, then the half- 
year's rent was to be handed to the managing committee, and placed at the dis- 
posal of this committee absolutely for the purpose of conducting the fight. No 



150 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

money was to be spent in law costs. When the landlord agreed to settle, the 
law costs were to be deducted from the rent. 

This proposition would be accepted as just in any other country; but the 
Government denounced it as illegal — at the instigation of the Irish landlords. 
And even granting that it was illegal ; as Mr. O'Connor says : " In the peculiar 
circumstances of Ireland it was morally justifiable." 

One of the most notorious estates which was placed under the Plan of Cam- 
paign was that of Mr. Ponsonby — an absentee landlord. In most instances the 
rents were nearly double the Government valuation. The tenants who held 
under lease were compelled to accept these leases under the Land Act of 1870, 
under threat of eviction. For instance, Peter McDonagh, who was a most in- 
dustrious man, and whose family held the farm for over 200 years, was one of 
those victims. (This fact, and the others which I shall quote, I obtained from 
Canon Keller's "The Struggle for Life on the Ponsonby Estate"). He 
(McDonagh) improved the farm immensely, and built a sea-wall or embank- 
ment at the side seven feet high, eighteen feet thick, and four hundred yards 
long. To this expenditure the landlord did not contribute one penny. 
McDonagh was asked to sign the lease as described, but he refused point-blank. 
As a result, returning one day from the funeral of his child, he found a " notice 
to quit" nailed upon his door. The poor man was heart-broken; he gave up 
the struggle and signed the lease. Another of the Ponsonby tenants, Michael 
Mahony, was also forced to take a lease — his rent being raised from ^65 to 
£74., although the Government valuation was only ^43 i5^. These outrageous 
increases in rent were made in the face of the fact that, even from the average 
of the preceding year, the values of agricultural produce fell enormously. But- 
ter fell 50 per cent, and " the greater part of it was lost because of the wetness 
of the season." Wheat was sold for seven shillings and sixpence per bushel, 
or about one-third of what it brought in 1885, and some of it was unsalable at 
any price because of the inclemency of the season. Barley, which was one of 
the chief products of the estate, was sold at almost any price to meet the rents. 
Here is an account of this taken from the Cork Examiner : 

" Thursday being the first day during the season for purchasing malting 
barley in this district by the Middleton Distillery Company, early on that morn- 
ing cars laden with barley came from different parts of the county. As far as 
the chapel, loads of barley were closely arranged on either side of the road, and 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER 151 



the poor men, who came a long distance in inclement weather, could be seen 
asleep on the bags of barley. There were upwards of 1,000 loads of barley, on 
an average 8,000 barrels ; a barrel is two hundredweight. Of course the Dis- 
tillery Company could not buy all this grain, as it would take a week to weigh 
such a number of loads. The excitement which prevailed during the early part 
of Friday and during the day, caused a party of constabulary to be called out 
to keep order and protect the lives of those who had to be out on business. 
After all, the top price was only iay. per barrel for malting barley ; a great 
quantity was purchased at js. per barrel, and lots of it was rejected as being 
unfit for any use but food for cattle and pigs. On Friday the Distillery Com- 
pany refused to buy any more barley. There is no other market convenient, 
and up to 7,000 barrels of barley will have to be taken back from Middleton." 

But, notwithstanding their inability to pay the rents from the produce of 
their farms, the evictions went steadily on, and increasingly, until the Plan of 
Campaign was put into practical working shape. Its action did much to stay 
the hand of the "Crowbar Brigade"; its doctrines were fought tooth and nail by 
the Government ; but finally the justice of the movement was fully admitted by 
the London Times: 

" Unfortunately," it wrote, "it is too clear, from the evidence of Sir Michael 
Hicks-Beach, Sir Redvers Buller, and Captain Plunket, in the Dublin Police 
Court, as well as from the charge of Chief Baron Palles at Sligo, that the vig- 
orous enforcement of the law against tenants combining to refuse the payment 
of rent, is discouraged by the Irish Executive. We have excellent reasons," it 
went on, " for believing that high officials, undoubtedly acting under direct orders 
from the Chief Secretary, have taken upon them to advise landlords not to pro- 
ceed in the only effectual manner against tenants who have adopted the Plan of 
Campaign. Combination must be met by decisive action against the whole 
combined body ; but this is precisely the course discountenanced by the Govern- 
ment, which nevertheless is supposed to be contending against Mr. Dillon's 
policy." And in another article it summed up the policy of the Government 
by the declaration that it had "capitulated to crime and treason." 

And in this quotation there is an ample justification of the plans of Messrs. 
O'Brien and Dillon, to thwart the greed of Irish landlordism. 

In February, 1887, Mr. Arthur Balfour was appointed Chief Secretary to 
Ireland, to succeed Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who had resigned. As this gen- 



152 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

tleman has played such a part in the closing scenes of Mr. Parnell's political life 
and in the recent history of Ireland, it is not inappropriate to describe the 
manner of man he is : 

"Mr. Balfour is a tall and very slight man. The neck is long, narrow, and 
as thin as that of a delicate girl. On the whole, the impression he would give 
to a stranger who saw him for the first time and did not know him, would be 
that he was a «more than usually mild member of the mild race of curates. A 
tendency to seek frequent inspiration in his pocket-handkerchief would confirm 
the impression. In politics he assumes an air of extreme languor. He does not 
sit upright in his seat, nor is he content with the loll which is characteristic of 
most of the members of a body so overworked and so sedentary as the 
House of Commons. One of the many sayings current about him is that some- 
body declared he could never come to anything, as he was so fond of sitting on 
the small of his back. Sitting thus with his rather long legs stretched out before 
him, he gives an impression of physical and mental lassitude that could never be 
associated with a vigorous policy or a firm character. Indeed, Mr. Balfour might 
be described as almost ladylike in his manner and appearance. As to his morale, 
he is in the habit — I have been told — of talking in private of political affairs 
with a cynicism that to some brings amusement and to others disgust ; and that 
is interpreted by some as the reflection of his real sentiments, and by others as 
the affectation which is now habitual with those who see in languid airs the 
truest symbol of inward distinction. It may be that he is a mixture of what he 
appears and what he is supposed to be — he is half in earnest and half in con- 
temptuous doubt as to political struggles, and especially as to his own share in 
them. I have heard — though I don't know whether the statement is correct — 
that when he was at college, his leanings were toward Radicalism, and that he 
raged at the idea of ever being compelled to become a Tory because his uncle 
happened to be one of the Tory leaders. If this were so, circumstances proved 
too strong for him ; and he had to begin life with an act of flagrant apostasy to 
his own inner convictions and tendencies. A man that has thus to stifle the 
promptings of his nature, is certain to take his revenge for his own disillusioned 
and falsified life, by laughing at the sincerities of other men. 

" Such is Mr. Balfour ; physically weak, morally false, effeminate, ill and ill- 
tempered — in short, just the man for a wiseacre. Louis Napoleon sat shivering 
over a fire at the Tuileries, and even the heat was unable to keep his knees 




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HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



153 



from knocking and his teeth from chattering ; but all the time, the people in 
the streets of Paris — with the exception of a child or woman here and there 
— were being shot down." 

The most dangerous and cruel of men are not the robust, bold, and brutal 
tyrants. Effeminacy seems to breed ill-temper. The vanity of such men makes 
them to do that which appears strong ; and, as Mr. O'Connor aptly says : 
" Their effeminacy induces a certain tendency to political hysteria that has cruel 
and very callous elements." 

As I proceed I think I shall prove that the conduct of Mr. Balfour, with 
regard to his actions as Chief Secretary to Ireland, fully justifies this estimate of 
his character. 

A few days after his accession to the portfolio of Chief Secretary, Mr. Bal- 
four proposed the most atrocious Coercion Act that ever disgraced England's 
statute-books, and it was forced through Parliament. And then began a reign 
of terror in Ireland, unequalled in history. A peculiarity of the introduction of 
this bill was the statement made by Mr. Balfour, in which he said: "I stated 
before, and I state again, that we do not rest our case upon the statistics of 
crime in Ireland." Nor could he. Undoubtedly there was an increase from 
1884 to 1887, but this was no justification for the introduction of so tyrannous 
a measure, and the Government were obliged, at the very start, to abandon the 
argument of comparative crime. Here are the figures (official) of crime from 
1880 to 1886, inclusive : 

Total of 
agrarian crimes. 

880 . 2,585 

• 4439 
■ 3-433 

762 
916 

• 1,056 



It should be here remembered that a petty larceny, a threatening letter — the 
most trivial offense — which in other countries would be overlooked, was re- 
garded as a " crime." 

In the absence of statistics, Mr. Balfour used other arguments. First he 
advanced a series of "stories" or "anecdotes" — as he called them. Mr. Parnell 



X54 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

immediately arose and said : " On what authority does the right hon. gentleman 
rely for these statements?" "I am giving the House," replied Balfour, "the 
facts which I have obtained on my responsibility from what I consider an au- 
thentic source." " Name them ! Name the source ! " was shouted from the Irish 
benches ; but Mr. Balfour was deaf, and proceeded to give a rehash of the gos- 
sip of resident magistrates and others in his service, absolutely without founda- 
tion, but upon which testimony he asked the British House of Commons to 
pass an act, taking away the liberties of a nation. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Timo- 
thy Harrington succeeded in disproving every case given by the Chief Secretary ; 
and then he proceeded upon another line, and he based his second plea for co- 
ercion upon the " illegal and violent action of the National League." " Every 
one knows," said Mr. Balfour, " that boycotting prevails over certain districts 
of Ireland and makes life perfectly intolerable. Every one knows that every 
branch of the National League uses boycotting as the means of carrying out its 

decrees I have a good many cases of such occurrences here, which prove 

that it is done audaciously all over Ireland. One instance is from Mayo, and 
it is reported in United Ireland. In this case a branch of the League passed a 
resolution ' that no tradesman shall work for any person who cannot produce 
his card of membership of the League.' The hon. member for Cork stated that 
any branch of the League that put such pressure on would be immediately dis- 
solved." 

Mr. Parnell : "So it was; that branch was immediately dissolved." 
Not shamed by this exposure, Mr. Balfour went on to another case, and, it 
will be seen, with the like result. 

Mr. A. J. Balfour: "Then there was another case in Sligo." 
Mr. T. Harrington : " Yes, and I called for the resignation of the com- 
mittee." 

But notwithstanding that even the Government were forced to admit that 
there was no necessity for coercion because of crime ; the new scheme of the 
Prime Minister's nephew (Mr. Balfour) became law, and then began a rdgime 
of brutality which would make a Czar blush. The first and one of the most 
notorious acts of this new and most unique Autocrat happened at Mitchels- 
town on September 9, 1887. A meeting was held to discuss the condition of 
the tenantry of the estate. The police authorities, as was usual upon such occa- 
sions, did not consult the organizers of the meeting beforehand ; but, just as the 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 155 



meeting was about to begin, they forced their way through the crowd, " baton- 
ing as they went." They were, however, unsuccessful in reaching the platform, 
and were driven back by the people. They returned a second time in increased 
numbers and again attempted to force their way; but once again they were 
driven back, and finally took refuge in their barracks. 

It has been amply proven, since that memorable day, that the police were 
acting most illegally in endeavoring to break up a meeting which had not been 
proclaimed. But the moment they got into the barracks, they fired upon the 
people and three persons were shot — this, notwithstanding that where the crowd 
was, was a distance away, and that therefore there was no possible danger to the 
police. 

There were present at this meeting Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., Mr. 
J. T. Brunner, M.P., and several English ladies ; and the account they gave of 
the affair created intense excitement in England as well as in Ireland. The 
matter was immediately brought before the House of Commons, and Mr. Bal- 
four proceeded to justify the action of the police by giving an "official account" 
of the transaction, not one important detail of which was correct. The Irish 
Times — a Tory organ in Dublin — gives the following account of it : 

" The mounted farmers were scarcely in a position to move, so close was 

the press The police drew their batons and struck the flanks of the 

horses severely. In this way they advanced some distance into the crowd, and 
here the passage was blocked again, and they proceeded to force their way, 
using the muzzles of their rifles. " 

And here I shall give some of the testimony in regard to the murders. 
" Showers of stones," said Mr. Balfour, " were thrown at the police, and they 
were struck with blackthorns before they drew their batons." " Sticks were 
raised," is the account of Head-constable O'Doherty, " and the people were 
shouting and pushing us back. The horsemen were spurring their horses. 
Some of the men were struck, and one stone passed my face." " I saw one 
stone," says Mr. Dillon, " come from the outskirts of the crowd, go high in the 
air, and drop among the police. I saw no other stones thrown. In a second 
the police were batoning every one around them, and men fell beneath the 
blows as if a hailstorm of shot had been sent in among them." " Before the 
onslaught," says Mr. Conbrough, " I did not observe the people do anything 
toward them," meaning the police. 



156 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



The next misstatements of Mr. Balfour are so gross and so significant that 
I have to put the true and the false statements in parallel columns : 



MR. BALFOUR 
in the House of Commons. 

" It was not until they were thrown 
into disorder, and routed by a charge 
of the men on horseback — it was not 
until they were knocked down, wound- 
ed, and forced to fly for their lives, 
until the majority of them took refuge 
in the barrack, which was attacked and 
the door broken, that resort was had to 
firearms — firstly, for the purpose of 
protecting the barracks ; and secondly, 
for the purpose of protecting the un- 
happy police stragglers who were still 
left outside." 



Sworn Testimony of 
HEAD-CONSTABLE o'DOHERTY. 

" The barrack door was open when 
the first shot was fired from outside 
the barrack door. Sergeant Kirwan 
could have entered the barrack. Con- 
stable Leahy was coming up to the 
barrack at the time. The barrack was 
not broken into before the police fired. 
Stones were thrown, but the barrack 
door was not broken. / did not get 
my rifle before Constable Leahy {the 
only straggler) came in. A crowd of 
four or five hundred persons followed 
down to the barrack. They were 
throwing stones at the barrack. The 
stones were coming from the square. 
Stones were striking the barrack win- 
dows. There were six out of one hun- 
dred and sixty panes of glass broken / 
No person was injured by the stories 
which came toward the barrack." 

Mr. Dillon gives testimony which corroborates that of the Head-constable. 
He had succeeded in getting inside the barrack before the firing began. Think- 
ing that there was a crowd outside whose attack on the barrack was inducing 
the fire of the police, he asked to be allowed to address the people, and then he 
asked to be allowed to go outside. " They unbolted the door," says Mr. Dillon, 
" and when the door was unbolted there was nobody outside. I walked out, 
expecting to see a crowd that would have to be dispersed, and 1 found nobody ; 
and there were not ten men within sixty yards of the barrack." Similarly as to 
the alleged attack on the barrack, Mr. Dillon corroborates the Head-constable. 
The Head-constable states that out of the one hundred and sixty panes, six were 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



157 



broken. Mr. Dillon says he only saw three. The correspondent of the Standard 
puts the number of broken panes, like the Head-constable, at six ; but he adds : 
" Some of the broken glass lies outside " — that is to say, some of these panes 
were probably broken by the policemen pushing their rifles through. 

And now, as to the manner and temper in which the firing took place, I 
shall again put the true and the false statements in opposite columns : 

HEAD-CONSTABLE o'dOHERTY. 



MR. BALFOUR. 

" The fire from the barrack was not 
a random fire — it was not the fire of 
men who had lost all self-control owing 
to the treatment they had received, 
natural, in my opinion, as such absence 
of self-control would have been. // 
was the deliberate fire of men acting 
under the orders of their officer, who 
instructed them to fire only at those 
portions of the mob attacking the bar- 
rack, and who did their best to direct 
their fire at those who were guilty of 
this assault" 



" I got no orders to get my rifle. I 
went myself. I saw other men taking 
their arms. I could not say if they 
went of their own accord. I went of 
my own accord to where my rifle was, 
and brought it down." 
mr. morphy (counsel for the police). 

" We admit that Sergeant Kirwan 
got 710 order to fire ; but he fired." 

CONSTABLE RYDER CROSS-EXAMINED. 

" Who was the Inspector who gave 
the order to advance ? — On my oath I 
can't tell. 

"Who gave you the order to retire ? 
— I cannot tell you. 

"Was it your superior officer? — I 
believe it was. 

" Which of them ? — I cannot say. 

" Was it the same officer who gave 
you the order to advance that told you 
to retire? — Things were so confused 
that I could not tell if it was. 

" On your oath, when you fired, did 
you single out any one whom you saw 
stone-throwing ? — I did. 

" Did you single out any person to 
fire at ? — Yes. 



153 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

"On your oath, did you swear a 
moment ago that you did not fire at any 
single person ? — No ; but in this way, 
when one man is in front of the others. 

"Though the man might be inno- 
cent ? — I could not tell an innocent 
man in a crowd. 

" Did you aim to kill? — I did." 

A verdict of wilful murder was returned against the police, by the coroner's 
jury ; but Mr. Balfour had that verdict quashed ; and to use Mr. Gladstone's 
words : " The deaths of three men in Mitchelstown remain as unavenged as if 
they had been three dogs." 

On the 8th of August, preceding this horror, Mr. William O'Brien and 
Mr. John Mandeville held a meeting at Mitchelstown to protest against the ac- 
tion of the landlords ; but, immediately after the meeting they were arrested, 
promptly brought before the resident or stipendiary magistrates and sentenced : 
Mr. O'Brien to three months' imprisonment and Mr. Mandeville to two. Both 
appealed, and the case came up for trial on October 31st, before the Recorder 
of Cork — or, as he was then called, the County Court Judge. And of course 
the verdict, or rather the decision, was approved. 

They were first locked up in Cork County jail ; but the second morning 
after their incarceration a curious incident occurred — one telling more of Balfour's 
brutality than many a more important event in his administration. Mr. O'Brien 
himself graphically tells of it in his evidence at the inquest on Mr. Mandeville : 

" I met Mr. Mandeville about four o'clock on the second morning after our 
arrival in Cork jail." "That is not the usual hour for rising in the prison?" — 
" No, it is an extraordinary hour, and a very extraordinary occurrence. In win- 
ter the usual time for rising is a quarter to seven. I was called some time after 
three o'clock, and the deputy governor, Mr. Oxford, and the head warder un- 
locked my cell and entered with a lantern. The deputy governor said, ' Get up, 
Mr. O'Brien; going!' I said, 'In God's name! where at this hour of the 
morning ? ' He said, ' We know no more than yourself ; we were routed out of 
our beds ourselves.' I got up, and was brought on the corridor, and I there met 
Mr. Mandeville. It was bitterly cold and dark." 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 159 



" Did you ever read of anything more like a midnight murder ? " remarked 
Mr. O'Brien to Mr. Mandeville — words that have a strange significance at this 
hour. " I suppose that's just what they are up to," replied Mr. Mandeville. A 
short time afterward Mr. Mandeville made a remark which also has a pathetic 
and retrospective interest. He was suffering from diarrhoea from the cocoa he 
had received in the prison on the previous night : " but," says Mr. O'Brien, " he 
only laughed at it, and said, ' It will take a good deal to kill me ! ' He was," 
said Mr. O'Brien, " one of the most uncomplaining men I have ever met — a man 
of few words, and those always cheerful." The prisoners found ultimately that 
their destination was Tullamore. The reason of their removal to this distant 
prison was that if they had remained in Cork the tortures which Mr. Balfour 
contemplated might have been prevented by visits from the mayor and magis- 
trates of the city, who were in sympathy with the political views of his prisoners. 
In Tullamore it was thought that, with the magistracy almost entirely in the 
hands of Tories, they would be left unvisited and unprotected ; that the brutali- 
ties and cruelties might be inflicted upon them in the tomblike silence of the 
jail, and that there would be no communication whatever between them and the 
outer world. Unfortunately for this pretty plan of Mr. Balfour, there were one 
or two magistrates who were Nationalists, and it was to the publicity which Dr. 
Moorhead, one of their number, gave to his treatment by the jail authorities that 
Mr. O'Brien attributes the preservation of his life. But in spite of Dr. Moor- 
head, Mr. Balfour had now his opportunity. Perhaps the most formidable of 
all his political opponents was tight in his grasp, and another Irishman, brave, 
stalwart, and resolute, was at his mercy. He took advantage of the situation 
with a disgusting cruelty which must ever remain a blot on his name, and an 
infamy in English statesmanship. He insisted on Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mande- 
ville being treated as common criminals ; seized their clothes for the purpose of 
forcing them to put on the prison garb, and, when they refused to yield, pun- 
ished them repeatedly. The delicacy of Mr. O'Brien's constitution, and the 
prominent place he held in the eye and the affections of the Irish people, were 
to him a certain safeguard ; but with Mr. John Mandeville, Mr. Balfour thought 
he was safe, and Mr. Mandeville accordingly felt the full force of his cowardly 
vengeance. 

Mr. Mandeville had resolved to do nothing which would recognize the con- 
tention of Mr. Balfour that his offense was of the same disgraceful character as 



16Q CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

that of an ordinary offender. On two points the contest between Mr. Mande- 
ville and the prison authorities, acting under the instructions of Mr. Balfour, 
turned — they turned on whether Mr. Mandeville would wear the prison dress and 
whether he would clean out his cell. For refusing to comply with the regula- 
tions on these points, Mr. Mandeville was sentenced by the governor of the jail- 
or by a magistrate. The governor gave the following list of these punishments 
at the inquest : 

November 5, twenty-four hours' bread and Water. 

November 14, three days' bread and water. 

November 19, twenty-four hours' bread and water. 

December 8, forty-eight hours' bread and water. 

December 20, two days' solitary confinement in punishment cell. 

All these days of punishment have a tragic history of their own, which is 
told in the evidence given at the inquest, or in letters written by Mr. Mandeville 
long before his death, and, therefore, long before he could have contemplated 
their being used against his political opponents. When Mandeville entered 
prison — as has been said already, and as was sworn to by his widow at the inquest 
on his remains — he never had had a single day's illness. " I had known him 
since a child," swore Mrs. Mandeville. " I always looked on him as an amazingly 
strong man and very healthy. Between our marriage and the time he was sent 
to prison, on the 31st October last, he was always a strong and healthy man. I 
don't remember his being in bed for even one day through illness." But Man- 
deville was not long in prison when he began to show symptoms of physical 
decay. On the 10th of November Dr. Moorhead reported in the visitors' book: 
" He complained of sore throat, and his breathing seemed embarrassed." It has 
been suggested that all the statements with regard to Mr. Mandeville were in- 
vented after his death for political purposes, and to excite a storm of indignation 
against Mr. Balfour. The entry which proves the existence of sore throat was 
made many months before Mandeville's death, and nearly all the other evidence 
I shall quote will be evidence which was placed on record before his death, and 
therefore cannot have been manufactured afterward for the purpose of damaging 
a political adversary. 

Let us come to his second term of punishment. Of that terrible time we 
have a description in the words of Mandeville himself. He wrote a letter, dated 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. j^ 



the 2d of January, to Mr. Sydney Halifax — he did not die for six months af- 
terward — and here is his description in this letter of what he went through : 

" The punishment diet always makes me ill. I was obliged to give up tak- 
ing water with my bread, and had to swallow the latter dry, or an attack of diar- 
rhoea was the result. This attack generally lasted for three days, and on one 
occasion for more than six. I complained to the governor in presence of Dr. 
Moorhead (a J. P. for King's County) of the unfairness of putting me on pun- 
ishment dietary, as a double penalty of illness after starvation was inflicted upon 
me, and stated that if the law allowed starvation, yet he had no right to injure 
my health. His reply was that the medical officer of the prison made no such 
representation to him, having certified me fit for punishment, and that as I had 
refused to comply with regulations of the Prison Board, he was compelled to 
punish me in the proper discharge of his duty. 

" At this very time I was suffering from a cold and bad sore-throat, and 
being medically treated for the latter, besides being generally out of condition, 
the doctor must have known, as he saw me daily. Yet I was sentenced to 
seventy-two hours' punishment. After being fourteen hours on punishment 
dietary I got a violent attack of diarrhoea. I complained to the doctor that 
day. Yet as some prison test, unnecessary to mention, did not satisfy him, I 
was kept on punishment for thirty hours longer. On this occasion I remained 
twenty-four hours without taking any food, as the dry bread hurt my throat, and 
I feared to use water to moisten the food, knowing from former experience its 
effects. I certainly felt very ill and miserable, but hunger was not my punish- 
ment. I have all my life been able to endure want of food without suffering 
much pain, such as numbers of people complain of ; but I consider I was being 
savagely ill-treated, because the prison physician said I was not ill, and Dr. 
Moorhead had expressed a contrary opinion. However, I got so very ill and 
weak, and the prison physician's test having been satisfied, I was allowed off all 
punishment on the evening of the third day and put upon medical treatment. 
The only change made in my ordinary prison food was white bread substituted 
for brown. Next day I was very weak and tired after a couple of rounds of 
the exercise ring. I did not recover my general health for fully a week." 

There is one scene finally which deserves record. On the evening of the 
22d of November the governor of the jail entered Mandeville's cell; roused 
him out of bed ; tore off his own clothes — which he was wearing: at the time — 



Ig2 CHARLES STEWART PARKELL. 

even took away his shirt, and left him thus the choice of putting on the prison 
clothes, or of finding temporary cover in the bed-clothes. Mandeville adopted 
the latter alternative. He wrapped himself in a quilt and sheet. The re- 
mainder of the story will be told in the words of Dr. Moorhead: " On the 23d, 
the day after the forcible removal of his own clothes, I found Mr. Mandeville," 
says Dr. Moorhead, " walking about wrapped in a quilt and a sheet. He had 
no other clothing on him, not even a shirt. He was barefooted. He com- 
plained that his clothes had been forcibly taken from him the previous evening 
by several warders, after a struggle. He protested against the treatment and 
demanded his clothes. His legs and feet were perfectly bare, and his chest and 
one of his arms. The floor of the cell was flagged, and the weather at the time 
was the usual winter weather. I visited him next day, and he was then attired 
in prison garb. That day he told me the quilt and sheet were taken from him. 
He was left the choice of going perfectly naked or putting on the prison clothes, 
and he adopted the latter alternative under protest. I think he remained twenty- 
four hours naked before putting on the prison clothes." Finally, as to what 
John Mandeville suffered in prison, there is the testimony of his widow. It is 
asserted by Mr. Balfour and by one of Mr. Balfour's agents — of whom more 
presently — that Mr. Mandeville left the prison in perfect health. Here is the 
description which Mrs. Mandeville gave of his appearance when he returned 
home after his release : " He returned," she told the coroner's jury, " from Tulla- 
more on Christmas Eve." " Was his appearance then much altered? — Yes, his 
lips were quite blue, and he had become pale and very thin. His eyes were very 
sore ; he could not read at all by lamplight, and in the daytime he could only 
read with difficulty. He always wrote a fair, firm hand before he went to 
prison ; for a month after he left prison he could hardly write at all, or only 
with great difficulty. He complained of the weight of his overcoat, and com- 
plained that he could not walk the mile from his house to Mitchelstown. 

"Can you tell any incident to indicate his strength, Mrs. Mandeville? 

" Mrs. Mandeville : He used to carry me up-stairs and he never did it after 
he left prison. 

" Did he try to do it ? — He did once, and I remember him saying that I 
had got very heavy. He told me after he left prison that he never recovered 
his strength, and there seemed, to be always some little thing the matter with 
him. At one time it was his throat, and he complained of having a bad tooth. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. K33 



I noticed for a month before he died that he had great difficulty with his throat, 
and he complained of his throat being sore and of weakness." 

Next, as to his prison treatment, here is what Mrs. Mandeville had to say : 

" Did he tell you the whole of his prison life ? — Yes ; he told me the whole 
of his prison life. He told me more than he told any person in the whole 
world." 

" What did he tell you of his prison life ? — .... He complained very 
much of his throat after he came home. He complained to me that the doctor 
did not believe him about his throat, and that he frequently certified that he 

was fit for punishment when he was not fit He told me that while his 

throat was sore he was three days on punishment diet. He told me that his 
throat was so sore during that time that he could not eat the punishment diet, brown 
bread, and could not drink the cold water ; that he took nothing to eat for more 
than twenty hours, because he could not eat the bread or drink the water. He 
told me that one, I think, of the Tang prisoners in the jail had given him a 
rope, and that he tied it round his waist, and as he suffered more and more from 
hunger he tightened the rope (great sensation in court). He said to me that 
Dr. Moorhead said to him that he was seriously ill, yet that Dr. Ridley seemed 
to think that he could stand the punishment. 

" Did he say anything as to the state of his mind ? — He told me that from 
hunger his mind wandered, and he told me — of course it was in confidence 
between husband and wife — he told me he prayed to God that he might die 
rather than go mad (sensation). 

" Did he say anything about a scrap of food he got in prison ? — He told 
me one incident. He told me that there was a warder one day outside his cell 
door — one of the ordinary warders, not a friendly warder — and that the warder 
evidently was eating his dinner outside the door, and he said he opened the door 
and ' he threw me in a scrap of meat as I would throw it to Rover' — that is our 
dog — and he said he never in his life enjoyed anything so much — it was a mere 
tiny scrap." 

Such is the story — the shocking and terrible story — told by Mrs. Mande- 
ville with regard to her husband. One of the many delicate suggestions which 
Mr. Balfour has made in the course of this controversy is that Mrs. Mandeville 
invented this entire story. But if she invented the story to damage Mr. Balfour, 
she must have begun the process of invention before she could ever have con- 



1(34 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

templated that her husband's treatment would become one of the weapons 
against Mr. Balfour. The evidence I have quoted was given after the death of 
Mr. Mandeville, and so might have been invented for the purpose, Mr. Balfour 
has suggested ; but unfortunately for that theory, Mrs. Mandeville said exactly 
the same things before, as after the death of her husband. 

First, as to his appearance after he came out of prison. " He was very 
thin and weak," wrote Mrs. Mandeville, on January 7th, to Mr. Halifax. " I 
was horrified when I saw him," she wrote to Mrs. Tillyard, of Cambridge, at 
the same period. Then, as to the terrible story in which he is represented as 
tying a rope around his waist and his fearing madness, here is an extract from 
the same letter to Mrs. Tillyard : " His cell was flagged and bitterly cold. I 
wonder my husband did not go mad. He tied a rope round his waist, which he 
tightened as hunger grew worse." As to Mrs. Mandeville's statement about the 
scenes when he was sentenced to three days' punishment, nearly all are exactly 
the same as those which have already been quoted from a letter which Mr. Mande- 
ville wrote himself shortly after his release from imprisonment. 

There is one other witness as to the circumstances of John Mandeville's 
death who must be mentioned. For the purpose of investigating the treatment 
of the political prisoners, Mr. Balfour obtained the services of a Dr. Barr. Mr. 
Balfour denies all responsibility for the selection of this particular gentleman ; 
but it seems a singular coincidence that a man should be selected for this work 
who was an active Tory, an official of the Tory organization, and a man of 
strong Tory connections in Liverpool. Whether it were these facts or not that 
led to the selection of Dr. Barr, it is certain that he proceeded to his work in a 
spirit of the bitterest partisanship. 

At the time that Mr. Mandeville was in Tullamore jail Dr. Ridley was 
the physician. Everybody knows now the character of this unhappy man. He 
was apparently a weak man with strong instincts of humanity, afraid to give his 
instincts any rein lest he should lose his appointment. The first thing that Dr. 
Barr did was to warn Dr. Ridley that if he showed any indulgence to the prisoners 
under his charge the forfeiture of his place would immediately follow. The 
result of it was that Dr. Ridley at once agreed to the punishment of the pris- 
oners immediately after every visit of Dr. Barr. Alderman Hooper, who was in 
jail at the time, narrates how Dr. Ridley came in terror to announce an ap- 
proaching visit of Dr. Barr, and removed him, in consequence, from the hospital 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. K;5 



back to his cell. In one of his letters written by Mr. Mandeville after his 
release, from which quotations have already been made, there is an allusion to 
Dr. Barr. It confirms the suggestion of Mr. Hooper, that the purpose Dr. 
Barr fulfilled was that of hounding on Dr. Ridley to the more brutal treatment 
of his prisoners. "In justice to the doctor," writes John Mandeville in a letter 
of January 2d, " I must say that I complained of being kept on punishment, 
and stated all these facts to a medical inspector from the Irish Prisons Board, 
who said the prison doctor should act as he did, according to the instructions he 
received, if he discharged his duty properly, and that if he did not do so, he 
could be dismissed at twenty-four hours' notice from the Prisons Board. I com- 
plained also about being punished by being put on bread and water, knowing, as 
the doctor did, that it had an injurious effect upon me, and the only observation 
he made was that I did not get enough punishment." 

But we need not go further than the evidence of Dr. Barr himself as to 
the spirit in which he performed the work assigned to him by Mr. Balfour. In 
his evidence at the inquest he declared that Mr. Mandeville's death lay at the 
hands of the doctors who attended him, and that Mrs. Mandeville's statement 
as to the appearance of her husband after his release could not possibly be true. 
With the following extract we may finally dismiss Dr. Barr : 

"The MacDermot: Now I ask you another question, and take time to 
recollect, if you wish. Did you say to any gentleman in Liverpool that Mande- 
ville was a great scoundrel and did not get half enough, or deserved what he 
got? — I may have used words to that effect (sensation and murmurs in court)." 

John Mandeville died on July 8th. The conduct of Mr. Balfour after his 
death was even worse than the cruelty by which he had brought Mr. Mandeville 
to a premature grave. He kept silence on the subject until he spoke at a Tory 
meeting in Glasgow. Mr. Balfour has since attempted to explain away as best 
he could the tone of that speech ; and if it did no other good, it had the effect 
of making him a little ashamed of himself, for the first time since he undertook 
the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland. The speech certainly did require an apology ; 
and if the apology of Mr. Balfour had been frank, it might have been something 
of a reparation. But the apology was an audacious denial of what was true. 
Mr. Balfour denied that he had joked over the grave of Mr. Mandeville ; but 
the record of the speech and of how it was received remain, and across every 
line is written the cynical delight of the speaker in the story he was telling, and 



IQQ CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

uproarious delight of the audience that heard it. What is even worse, Mr. Bal- 
four sought — slyly and by insinuation rather than by open statement — to blacken 
the character of a man he had done to death by a calumny as unfounded as ever 
assailed the fame of the living or the dead. In the report which was published 
in the Glasgow Herald, a Unionist journal, on the day after the speech was de- 
livered, the reader is constantly met with " laughter," " shouts of laughter," etc. 

In this speech there is a description of what Mr. Balfour calls "the engage- 
ments " of Mr. Mandeville. He gives the following account of Mr. Mandeville's 
doings, the minuteness of which gave to the shocked conscience of the country 
an insight into the system of political espionage which Unionist government 
and coercion demand in Ireland : 

" On the 2 1 st of May he drove home late at night, having taken part in a 
drunken row ; on the 30th of May he attended an open-air demonstration ; and 
then, on the 3d of June, attended another open-air meeting, and made afterward 
a speech on the 4th of June ; he attended on the 5th of June another meeting, 
and the day was pouring wet, and he was out in it all day (laughter) ; on the 
6th of June, which was also a wet day, he took part in a demonstration ; on the 
14th of June he was in Fermoy in the evening, and remained in a public-house 
till after 10 o'clock (laughter), and then he drove home (renewed laughter) ; on 
the 17th he spoke at Killiclig, and on the 18th headed a mob at Fermoy; on 
the 22d of June he was in court, and on the 25th of June he was in another pub- 
lic-house at Fermoy at 11:30." 

" And so on," properly commented William O'Brien, " with the astounding 
record of where he was on such a day, what house he visited, whom he saw, what 
he said, what hour he left home, and what hour he returned — a picture worthy 
of the most loathsome traditions of Russian despotism or of the dark cabinets 
of Fouche" and Vidocq." 

In Mr. J. J. Carney's pamphlet, entitled " A Year of Unionist Coercion," 
he gives the following summary of the brutalities of Mr. Balfour, which were 
inflicted on the different Irish Members of Parliament : 
" Mr. David Sheehy, M.P., for a public speech : 

" 1. Arrested and denied bail pending trial, although his wife was danger- 
ously ill. 

" 2. Taken to an empty cell for refusing to take off his clothes, knocked 
down by five warders, and stripped of his clothes by force. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. iqj 



"3. Left naked in the cell for two hours, with an open window, which 
faced the north and was out of reach. 

" 4. Put by force in prison clothes, and conveyed to another cell, where he 
flung off the prison clothes except the shirt and drawers, which for fourteen days 
were his only clothing in the daytime, the month being December. 

" 5. Put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for refusing to clean his 
cell. 

" 6. Roused up at an early hour on the 3d of January, forcibly dressed in 
prison clothes and his own overcoat, and (he having cast away the prison cap) 
brought a long journey bareheaded before his own constituents, and into the 
court-house at Portumna, as a witness in the case of Mr. Blunt. 

" 7. Put to sleep on a plank bed. 

" 8. Fed on prison food. 

"9. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon; imprisoned afterward 
for another speech for three months as a first-class misdemeanant— the change in 
the treatment being due to the humanity of the County Court Judge who heard 
the second case on appeal. 

"Alderman Hooper, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Cork Herald, 
reports of public meetings : 

" 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb. 

" 2. Put on bread-and-water diet, and kept in constant confinement for five 
days, for refusing to clean out cell utensils. 

"3. Suffered from diarrhoea as result of bread-and-water diet, and com- 
pelled to go to hospital for ten days. 

"4. Prevented from taking exercise, and confined in a cell 14 feet by 6 feet 
for twenty-four days, because he would not take it in company with two criminals 
who were in prison for stabbing. 

" 5. Put on plank bed. 

" 6. Kept in prison for two months. 
" Mr. W. J. Lane, M.P., for a public speech : 

" 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb. 

" 2. Put on bread-and-water diet for eight days. 

" 3. Confined to cell twenty-two days. 

" 4. Rendered unable to sleep eight nights. 

" 5. Put on plank bed. 



1£8 CHAELES STEWART PARNELL. 

" 6. Kept in prison one month. 
" Mr. J. R. Cox, M.P., for public speech : 

" i. Clad in prison clothes (his own clothes having been taken out of his 
cell the first night). 

" 2. Put on plank bed. 

" 3. Put on bread-and-water diet, which caused diarrhoea, whereupon 
removed to hospital for ten days by doctor's orders. 

"4. Kept on prison fare remainder of the term. 

" 5. Put to picking oakum like ordinary criminal. 

" 6. Kept in prison for one month, and afterward another month as a first- 
class misdemeanant. 
" Mr. Douglas J. Pyne, M.P., for a public speech : 

" 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison clothes. 

" 2. Kept in cell without a fire, which brought on chilblains on ears, where- 
upon removed to room in hospital ; also suffered from diarrhoea. 

" 3. Set to picking oakum. 

"4. Locked up in cell from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. every day, and out only half 
an hour every Sunday morning when at church. 

" 5. In prison six weeks. 
" Mr. James Gilhooly, M.P., for a public speech : 

" 1. Made to sleep on a plank bed. 

" 2. Stripped of his own clothes and put in prison clothes by force. 

" 3. Fed on prison fare and put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet 
for several days. 

" 4. Kept in close confinement for several days for refusing to take exercise 
with ordinary criminals. 

" 5. Kept in prison for fourteen days, and for a further period of fourteen 
days for an alleged assault on a policeman, which was sworn by several respect- 
able persons to have been committed only after Mr. Gilhooly had himself been 
assaulted. 

" Mr. Edward Harrington, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Kerry 
Sentinel, reports of public meetings : 

" 1. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon. 

" 2. Clad in prison clothes. 

" 3. Brought in prison clothes from the jail into the court-house in Tralee 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J (59 



— the county town in the division of Kerry which he represents in Parliament — 
to give evidence in the case of his brother, Mr. T. Harrington, M.P. 

" 4. Fed on prison fare. 
5. Put on plank bed. 
"Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., for a public speech, the object and result of 
which was to save a large body of tenants in his own constituency from 
extermination, and to enable them to take advantage of the Land Act of 
1887: 

" 1. Imprisoned for three months as a common criminal. 

" 2. Having refused to take off his own clothes and put on prison clothes, 
was for six days after committal subjected to constant threats of force. 

" 3. Put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for several days in suc- 
cession for refusing to wear prison clothes. 

"4. Had his clothes stolen while he lay asleep, and thus rendered unable 
to get out of bed at all for several days. 

" 5. Subjected in his cell to the torture of night alarms and constant 
spying. 

" 6. Denied the use of pen and ink or pencil, and compelled to send a 
letter out of prison written with a pin in his own blood. 

" 7. Kept in a cold and airless cell, and made to sleep on a plank bed for 
a considerable time. 

" 8. Threatened with tubercular disease in consequence of his treatment, 
and so wasted on his release that his medical attendant forbade his taking part 
in any public work for a time, and ordered him to go abroad for the benefit of 
his health. Mr. O'Brien, it should be explained, suffered some years ago from 
lung disease." 

But it is useless to pursue this matter further. The tyranny of Balfour 
was admittedly the most heinous that ever existed in any country ; but despite 
it, Mr. Parnell and his lieutenants defied the powers which had been intrusted 
to this man, and, against every odds, persevered in their struggle for Irish 
autonomy and the vindication of the Irish race. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



The O'Shea Divorce Case— The Secession of Mr. Parnell's Followers— His Refusal to 
Resign the Leadership — His Reasons— Patriotic to the Last— An Englishman's Re- 
view of Gladstone's Unreliability — Mr. Parnell's Death— His Last Words— The 
entire Political World shocked by his sudden Demise— His Funeral. 



T is not for me now, nor for any man to enter into the private life of 
Mr. Parnell, or to discuss it. I am dealing with him only as the 
leader of the Irish race. On December 28, 1889, Captain O'Shea 
filed a petition for divorce from his wife, and named Mr. Parnell as co-respond- 
ent. Mr. Parnell was at this time discussing with Mr. Gladstone, the latter gen- 
tleman's Home Rule proposals. He had forced the great English leader to ask 
his assistance. At no time during his career was his power so potent ; but a black 
cloud had come between him and the laurel wreath — treachery. 

The moment the divorce case was finished, at the bidding of Mr. Gladstone, 
two-thirds of his followers deserted him, and swayed by a fantastic morality they 
demanded his retirement. He refused to do this unless certain conditions were 
agreed, and here, from my humble standpoint, I shall endeavor to defend his 
action. 

The crucial question upon which Mr. Parnell's final step will be judged and 
by which his action in persisting to refuse to give up the reins of power in the 
Irish party will be ultimately condoned or condemned, resolves itself into one of 
remarkable simplicity. It is this : Was he justified in declining to accept the be- 
lief that Mr. Gladstone would remain true to the scheme of Home Rule, which 
he had succeeded in convincing the majority of the party he was an earnest ad- 
vocate of ? Could Mr. Gladstone really be depended upon, under every circum- 
stance of political prosperity or of political adversity, to remain true to the cause 
of Home Rule as defined by those who were in negotiation with him, — without 
peradventure, and without yielding one jot or iota to the needs of party, the press- 
ure of English opinion or the exigencies of statecraft ? 
(170) 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. \^\ 



It was this whole-souled devotion, this steadfastness to principle — political 
principle, — as to eternal truth which, in Mr. Parnell's eyes, was needed : Could 
he trust him ? That was the problem facing Mr. Parnell. And he had to meet 
it alone ; as between his conscience, his country, and his God. 

The grave has closed over the only hand which could indite the story of 
these days, and we shall never know the chain of wrestling by which Ireland's 
great patriot, in that awful hour, determined that he could not trust Gladstone. 
We may never know the specific acts upon which, in reviewing the past history 
of the one man who held the power to do his soul's desire, Parnell decided that 
Gladstone might keep the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the heart. 
The musings of that mighty mind are buried with him in the grave, and the 
sealed book is closed until the Judgment-day. 

But we have the same material which we can marshal that he had ; we have 
the same grand cause. We may not have the keen perception, the clear eye, the 
personal acquaintance, so valuable beyond price in estimating character, that Mr. 
Parnell possessed ; but we have the public life's record of Mr. Gladstone for our 
less feeble guidance, and let us look to that through its half century's career for 
light and comparison. 

On the very threshold of the subject, without, for the moment, attempting to 
find any reasons for it, there arises the most significant fact — a fact unparalleled in 
the history of any English statesman — that this very question, from the earliest days 
of Mr. Gladstone's career until his latest, has been periodically passed judgment 
upon by the vox populi, which practice and proverb alike rely on as indicating an 
intuitive judgment of truth and just as regularly as the constituencies elected him, 
so, just as regularly, they found him out, and with no uncertain sound pronounced 
against him the verdict of dismissal. In a word, the Hosannas of his Palm Sun- 
days have ever been swiftly followed by the Good Friday's "give us Barabbas." 
The most phlegmatic and aristocratic as well as the most easily swayed demo- 
cratic of English constituencies have, alike, found him out. Rejected by the 
pocket borough of Newark in 1848, he turned to his Alma Mater, and in the 
classic and ultra-conservative bosom of the University of Oxford he found a 
welcome. Oxford, deceived and at last betrayed, turned her back upon him in 
1865, and the brawny democratic electors of Southwest Lancashire elected him. 
Lancashire, in turn, dismissed him in 1868. Then a Metropolitan Borough 
caught this rolling magnate in her arms, but only to fling him aside as did the 



172 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

others, until at last he found a faithful constituency, and since then he has repre- 
sented Mid-Lothian — a Scotch constituency. So that the question widens out 
into the still further one : were the judgments of the vox populi of England as 
well as the individual judgment of Mr. Parnell justifiable? 

To elucidate this it would be well, nay, it is necessary, to trace back to its 
advent Mr. Gladstone's career ; and fortunately, for the clearer and more judicial 
judgment on this point, I have had placed in my hands the investigation of an 
English author (Mr. Charles Turner), whose mind, as if by prophetic instinct, 
was directed to this question some three years ago, and the manuscript which 
he then wrote has lain dormant in his study-desk until I mentioned the subject 
to him a few days ago. And I have no hesitation in availing myself of his 
reluctantly-given permission to use it in this work. It is a perfect revelation of 
Mr. Gladstone's character, and a perfect defense of the issue with which I have 
begun this chapter. 

" The circumstances under which Mr. Gladstone entered public life were 
the most favorable. Born, not in the purple, but on the borders of it, of a com- 
mercial family in easy circumstances, bred ' under the shadow of Canning,' pre- 
ceded by his own father in Parliament, he left Eton and Oxford with a con- 
siderable reputation, and entered the House of Commons, through the pocket 
borough of Newark, under the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, to be 
presently and rapidly installed into office under the patronage of Sir Robert 
Peel. By 1846 it was already written of him that he had 'invested himself 
with a certain mysterious interest, his warning voice and his solemn exhort- 
ation' had even then 'rendered him the object of a vague admiration.' Has 
admiration, in its natural sense, ever been deserved? This is a question which 
diverges at once into two distinct, yet ever crossing, branches. What has been 
his conduct and what have been the results arising from it ? Has his course of 
action as 'the man' and 'the statesman ' given valid and substantial grounds for 
admiration ? Does his conduct as a ' colleague ' and his success as ' a statesman ' 
entitle him to that exalted niche amongst the Gods in the Temple of Fame, 
wherein his most recently acquired friends would place him ? 

" No answer can be resolved out of this inquiry which does not rest upon 
agreed 'premises'; therefore it must be premised, as indeed it will be pretty 
generally admitted, that, at least, amongst the attributes which are essential to a 
'statesman ' are 'a patriotism which sees only the interests of its own country'; 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 173 



' principles ' right for their own sake and not merely expedient ; ' penetrating 
perspicacity' and 'perseverance,' unremitting in a defined course. And then, 
again, as a member of many governments, with many colleagues in a common 
venture, it will be equally generally granted that ' loyalty ' is of primal im- 
portance. Whilst in the united position of ' man ' and ' statesman,' which is 
occupied by a ' party leader,' we should look for ' success ' to have crowned his 
leadership. 

" The answer to these questions will decide his title. 

" And first, what has history to say of him in that capacity in which the 
' colleague ' bears the major relation ? — it will be best to dispose of the personal 
question of his conduct as a colleague first. In that relation was he 'loyal'? 
Shades of departed statesmen ! Ghosts of the great slain ! Memoirs which 
show ' the touch of a vanished hand' ! Answer ye ! The very threshold of his 
official career is marked with a warning, noted at the time, ' as affording a bad 
guarantee for his political wisdom who could risk the stability of the Govern- 
ment in order to secure a brief personal dclat.' He gave his assent to Sir 
Robert Peel's proposal to increase the endowment of Maynooth, but, instead of 
following it up, he resigned his office in the Government. Since then he has 
never joined a Government but to desert or ruin it. He never deserted one 
but to attack it ; he never attacked it but he slayed it. 

" He deserted the Government of Lord Aberdeen in 1855 — the policy of 
which he had largely shaped — denounced it as carrying on a policy * immoral, 
inhuman, and unchristian,' and smashed it. He deserted the Government of 
Lord Palmerston in 1857, denounced it in relation to the Chinese war as de- 
parted from the principles of ' eternal justice,' and smashed it ; and he followed, 
with relentless rigor, until he smashed the reconstructed Government of Lord 
Palmerston in 1858, on the question of the amendment of the Conspiracy Laws. 
To resign, to attack, to watch the apparently rising tide, and to mount it, have 
been tactics quite as sedulously followed with his aforetime colleagues as with 
his political opponents. He wrecked the Government of Lord John Russell in 
1866, in which he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, by personally dragging 
into prominence the dormant question of Electoral Reform. He wrecked his 
own Government in 1873 by throwing over the policy of 'concurrent endow- 
ment ' which he had adopted at the knee of Sir Robert Peel, and apparently, 
from that time, believed in as the policy for Ireland. He wrecked his own Gov- 



174 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

ernment in 1885 by throwing over nearly all his colleagues and the convictions 
of a lifetime, and by adopting, behind their backs, the forsworn principle of 
Home Rule for Ireland. The track of his whole career can be traced by the 
skeletons of his victims and the wrecks of his failures. 

"To the 'stern and unbending Tories' of fifty years ago Mr. Gladstone 
was ' the rising hope.' Amongst his first votes were those given for putting the 
cost of maintaining the fabric of the Churches on the Land Tax — that is, prac- 
tically on the public purse ; against the admission of Dissenters into the offices 
or emoluments of the universities ; against the admission of Jews into Parlia- 
ment ; and against the repeal of those badges of a past clerical tyranny, ' the 
Conventicle acts.' He resisted the Government proposal to reduce the duty on 
foreign sugar to the amount paid on sugar grown in the British colonies (on 
the fanciful ground, which probably occurred to no other human being, that 
foreign sugar was produced by ' slave labor,' whereas England had freed her 
colonial negroes). On the Corn Laws he supported the sliding scale of Sir 
Robert Peel, only to take the final plunge of total abolition, which led to the 
ultimate extinction of the party. 

"From that time until the final incorporation of the 'Peelites' into the 
Liberal party, he led a political life, which he has himself described, with figura- 
tive accuracy, as 'a disembodied existence, like roving icebergs on which man 
could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous colli- 
sion.' Now coquetting with Lord Derby and the Tories, now joining the 
' Coalition Ministry ' of Lord Aberdeen, only to desert it in its hour of need ; 
now alternately harrying the Ministry of Lord Palmerston, joining it and leav- 
ing it — truly typifying the figurative accuracy of his description, ' a political ice- 
berg on which man could not land with safety, but against which ships might 
get wrecked,' and so he continued until he became, what from the first had been 
the object of his ambition — ' Prime Minister ' himself. 

"To those who studied him closely Mr. Gladstone has always been an open 
book ; though to the general public, ' the veiled prophet.' Lord Macaulay, fifty 
years ago, recognized that ' whatever Mr. Gladstone sees, he sees refracted 
through a false medium,' and his latest critic and colleague, Mr. Forster, who 
knew him well, declared in the House of Commons, ' He can persuade most 
people of most things, but, above all, he can persuade himself of anything.' 
And therein Mr. Forster touched the spring which unlocks much that would 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J 75 



otherwise be inexplicable in Mr. Gladstone ; for, whatever Mr. Gladstone may 
appear to others, however glaringly tortuous, conflicting, and opposing his views 
of the same problem at different times may appear to himself, his views, his 
aims, and his modes appear a perfectly harmonious and logically consistent evo- 
lution. He has recognized, and admitted, that there may be men whose 'great 
and glaring changes in their course are systematically timed and turned to their 
own advantage ; whose changes are hooded, slurred over, or denied,' but he has 
been none of them. He is ready, indeed, to heap coals of fire on his own head, 
if he could be convinced that his conduct had been ' manoeuvres which destroy 
confidence and entail merited dishonor,' 'changes accepted with a light and con- 
temptuous repudiation of former self.' But what is the use of trying to convince 
such a mind ? You might just as well try to convince a lunatic that he is not 
the Emperor of China. You may, indeed, point out to such an one that he 
lacks the insignia of that office ; that he has not even a pigtail ; or you may 
point out so startling an inconsistency as that he is making his claim in good 
English, of which language the Emperor of China is ignorant ; it is no matter, 
he has persuaded himself that he is the Emperor of China, and that is enough 
for him. You cannot convince him, simply because you do not see through the 
same mental vista he does, or even because you see evidences inconsistent with 
his claims. That is your misfortune, not his ; and although, of course, there is 
too much method in Mr. Gladstone's mind for so exaggerated a fiction as the 
Emperor of China, yet it is nevertheless scarcely less incomprehensible, to ordi- 
nary mortals, that he can so successfully 'persuade himself of anything' as to be 
unable to see what is so apparent to the natural man. He is, indeed, a psycholog- 
ical puzzle. Not only, as Lord Macaulay said, is there raised between him and 
his objects ' a false medium which distorts and distracts,' but this false medium 
over the loop-holes of his conscience is like the skin of the chameleon : it changes 
its hue with the ever-changing pervading color of the images he surrounds him- 
self with, and makes that object, which to-day was red, to-morrow green, impos- 
ing upon his understanding corresponding conclusions. Nor is there absent an- 
other striking symptom, evidenced in the self-satisfying assurance that the views 
he holds, however inconsistent, antagonistic, and conflicting they may appear to 
mortal and erring man, are always the views which the Almighty favors. He 
cannot, as Dr. Wordsworth wrote in 1852, 'veer from one extreme of specula- 
tion to its opposite, and, with something of childish recklessness and impatience, 



176 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

cast down and destroy the splendid edifice of philosophical reasoning which he 
once and so ably raised,' without doing so ' from the best and holiest motives.' 
His speeches teem with this view, verging, at times, on the profane. He has 
seen the Pisgah view : to him has been drawn aside the curtain ; on him has 
fallen the pentecostal fire ; and between the Almighty and him there has been 
established an identity of purpose almost amounting to a partnership. His 
speech at Liverpool, on being rejected by the constituency of Oxford, is a fa- 
miliar instance of this. He trembles with apprehension at its fate ! Rejected 
him ! turned its back on the defender of ' Eternal justice ' ! the smiter of the 
wicked Lord Palmerston : ' the least trustworthy of modern ministers,' as he 
called him, — what could be the fate of such a place ? Long, he says, ' in spite of 
active opposition, Oxford resisted every effort to displace me. At last she has 
changed her mind. God grant it may be well with her ! " The parallel of the 
sorrow over Jerusalem is too patent to be missed. 

" To this is added, for the further bewilderment of ordinary comprehensions 
brought up on the simple rules of Cobbett and Lindley Murray, and guided 
only in their interpretation by the light of Dr. Johnson's dictionary, a rhetoric 
which, even in its callow infancy, appeared to Lord Macaulay to ' darken and 
perplex his logic,' and ' a vast command of a kind of language grave and majes- 
tic, but of a vague and uncertain import." The whole range of his writings re- 
veals, on every page, the accuracy of Lord Macaulay's diagnosis — pro- 
visos, negatives, personal reservations, qualifications of time and circumstance, 
doubts and conjectures, bristle in almost every sentence, like the survival of 
the works of one of those wonderful metaphysically subtle Graeco-Eastern 
minds of the school of Alexandria, which, as Kingsley points out, ' saw,' 
or as Mr. Gladstone, in his more cautious language, would have said, 
'seemed to perceive,' 'in phrases and definitions, unmeaning to the grosser in- 
tellect, symbols of most important realities, and felt that on the distinction be- 
tween " homoousios " and " homoiousus," might hang the whole problem of hu- 
manity.' Well may Mr. Gladstone have written, in one of those sudden im- 
pulses of almost confidential frankness, ' many are the tricks of speech,' for you 
can never be sure you have grasped his whole, palpable, or natural meaning. 
Years afterward a preposition, a conjunction, a parenthesis, or a proviso, on which 
the fate of nations may depend, will be called attention to by him ; as if for that 
proviso, for that hidden equivoque, the whole composition was written ; and not 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. ] 77 



that it might bear the interpretation which men, with only plain understanding 
looking for a plain answer to a plain question, had foolishly, negligently, and 
with want of due diligence and nice understanding, put upon it. In dialect- 
ical controversy Mr. Gladstone never ' burns his boats.' 

"There is, indeed, one distinguishing uniformity in Mr. Gladstone's course 
which redeems it from the slighest eccentricity of orbit, and determines all his 
movements to have been revolutions with a fixed centre : and that is the ever 
recurring fact that his changes of view have ever been exactly coincident with 
the necessity for a new cry, or for a new effort, either to retain or to secure 
political office. He himself has said, ' If this can be justly charged upon me I 
can no longer desire that any portion, however small, of the concerns or inter- 
ests of my country shall be lodged in my hands '; but of course he had already 
'persuaded himself of his innocence ; yet the coincidence of views and necessi- 
ties is apparent, proven conclusively from the pages of all contemporary records, 
and might have been prognosticated. 

"To be 'left alone' or to be left in a minority has ever been his terror. 
Take the first serious instance in his career. In 1839 he published his first seri- 
ous work, ' The State in Relation to the Church.' It was a defense of the Irish 
Church as an establishment, to use his own words, 'based on the highest and 
most imperious grounds.' Of it, he said himself, thirty years after, ' my doctrine 
was that the Church, as established by law, was to be maintained for its truth ; 
that this was the only principle on which it could be properly and permanently 
upheld ; that the principle, if good in England, was good in Ireland ; that truth 
is, of all things, the most precious possession of the soul of man,' — noble words ! 
spoken with all the virgin innocence of conscientious conviction. Belief in 
them upheld the early Christian in the bloody arena of the Roman circus ; sus- 
tained the early disciples, nerved Latimer and Ridley at the stake, inspired the 
fiery hosts of Mahomet ; and still sustains, under the broiling sun of pestiferous 
Africa, and in the frigid homes of the Arctic regions, the lonely missionary. 
But mark the sequel in Mr. Gladstone ! Again quoting his own words : ' Scarcely 
had my work issued from the press when I became aware that there was no 
party, no section of a party, no individual person probably in the House of 
Commons who was prepared to act upon it. / found myself the last man in 
a sinking ship! 

" Lord Macaulay, in his criticism of the work, had, in fact, opened Mr. 



178 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Gladstone's eyes, for he had declared the work to be ' the measure of what a 
man can do to be left behind in the world ; it is the strenuous effort of a very- 
vigorous mind to keep as far in the rear of general progress as possible.' 

" Mr. Gladstone recognized at once that for a practical worldly man he 
was living in a fool's paradise. What, then, was his course ? Within five years, 
i. e., in 1844, he was President of the Board of Trade, and Sir Robert Peel, the 
then Prime Minister, made known to him his intention of laying his hand on 
the sacred ark of the covenant of ' truth ' by increasing the Government grant 
to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth : to further what, to Mr. Gladstone, 
was contradistinguished as heresy from that 'truth' of the Irish Church so 
'precious to the soul of man.' He, Mr. Gladstone, resigned his office to salve 
his conscience, but he spoke and voted for the measure in the House of Com- 
mons ; and, with a gravity perfectly incomprehensible, he proceeded, thirty years 
after, to base upon that fact the proposition : ' I respectfully submit by this act 
my freedom was established.' He in fact deserted the sinking ship. He sacri- 
ficed 'truth,' ' so precious to the soul of man '; but he was no longer left alone ; 
he avoided that, and kept open his career by joining those who destroyed the 
only principle on which the ' truth' could be ' properly and permanently upheld.' 
' I found myself alone.' Is that a reason, in great minds, for abandoning ' truth ' ? 
All really great minds, at times, find themselves 'alone'; but has 'truth' ever 
been advanced by abandoning it ? Did Paul before the Roman Governor abandon 
truth ? Did Galileo, when he found himself alone, abandon truth ? Did Colum- 
bus, because he was a lone believer, abandon truth ? Did Luther abandon truth 
because he could find 'no party' to act with him? Did Darwin abandon his 
theories because they first developed to him ' alone ' ? No ! the world had been 
a different world indeed if the reallv great minds had ever acted thus. Great 
minds are nerved and not startled at finding themselves ' alone ' — the practical 
man, already an aspiring professional politician, with unaccomplished hopes, can 
so act : in him it is to be expected, and it may be worldly expedient in more than 
a personal sense ; but he who so acts must abandon his empty claim to be con- 
sidered as guided by an exalted devotion to soul-inspiring and soul-devouring 
' truth ' and be prepared to come down to the lower plane of the calculating 
man of the world. He must be content to be reckoned with the mortals, or 
even amongst the tadpoles and tapirs of politics. 

" Upon this lower plane this disclosure of Mr. Gladstone by himself, throws 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 179 



a significant side-light, and exhibits, at its root, a lacking faculty which has dog- 
ged his whole career. From want of ' perspicacity ' he was in that sinking ship, 
and from the want of that faculty he has been continuously wrong in his antici- 
pations. Hence his violent tergiversations so soon as it did become apparent to 
him that he was being left in a sinking ship. He was a member of the Ministry 
which entered into the war with Russia in 1853, only to live long enough to 
leave on record that ' the persons who are really entitled to vaunt their foresight 
as superior alike of sovereigns and of statesmen,' are those ' who objected to the 
war from the beginning to the end.' He declared, in the great American strug- 
gle, that 'the South had made an army, a navy, and what is more, they have 
made a nation. We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern 
States so far as regards their separation from the North,' only to have the results 
swiftly belie his prophecy, and to live to record that ' its trial had proved the 
sagacity of the construction and the strength of the fabric' { 

" He denounced the bringing over of native troops from India to Malta, 
in preparation for possible troubles with Russia in 1878, as 'a defiance of the 
law ' and ' an assault on the Constitution,' only to find himself constrained not 
only to send for them, but to use them in his own campaign in Egypt, if such 
a word as campaign may be used in relation to what he indignantly insisted 
were so very different, being merely 'military operations,' beginning with the 
bombardment of Alexandria and the battle of Tel-el-Keber, and ending with the 
Nile expedition and the ineffaceable disgrace of Gordon's abandonment. 'Too 
late' dogged the steps of Mr. Gladstone then, as 'too late' had, on the con- 
temporary authority of Lord Derby, adhered to his whole policy on the Crimean 
war thirty years before — the same fatal want of ' perspicacity.' 

" Nor is want of ' perseverance ' in a defined course less notorious. Always 
excepting his perseverance in hunting down an opponent, then bis perseverance 
has scope enough ; then in a position, as he once described it, ' of greater free- 
dom and less responsibility,' he can let loose his fervid imagination in ' the hair- 
brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity,' and exhibit an ubiquitous energy which 
is truly astonishing. But no sooner does he lose the target of his opponent's 
policy, at which he has been wont to steady his aim, point the shafts of his 
ridicule, or hurl the thunderbolts of his wrath, than his lack of perseverance in 
a defined course, his lack of backbone, becomes not only strikingly apparent, 
but strikingly painful. Then, like the thistledown, his resolution is blown 



130 CHARLES STEWART PAKXELL. 

hither and thither at a breath. First he will, and then he won't ; and then he 
does, and then he don't. Is he dealing with the rebellious Boers of South, 
Africa? Then on the Monday of his policy he will enter into no terms with 
them ' until the authority of the Queen has been re-established,' only on the 
Tuesday of his policy to lay down his arms ; and whilst yet that policy is flouted 
by the armed rebels, he concludes a treaty which staggers even his best friends. 
Indeed, his best friends are the most frequently puzzled how to keep touch with 
or to follow him ; whilst as for the newspapers : well, to them the strain has in 
many cases become unbearable, and must at times be maddening. Take the 
case of Punch, the most valuable ally Mr. Gladstone ever had, and see what 
traps Mr. Gladstone has led that into. Take one instance only out of many. 
He had been making a speech, which had raised to the highest flight Tenniel's 
devoted genius, and he represented Mr. Gladstone in one of the most remark- 
able drawings of the century — armed cap-a-pie, with sword bared and flashing 
eye, ready to lay down his life and lead his country to enforce against Russia 
' the sacred covenant ' she had made ; only — so rapidly does his mood change — 
to compel the artist to rack his brains the next week to belittle the fall of the 
humble, crestfallen, and repentant ' Knight-errant Bob Acres.' 

" These characteristics, however, are, after all, but the evidences of under- 
lying traits, which were, by their opposing influences, certain to doom Mr. 
Gladstone to failure as a statesman ; one conspicuous by its absence, the other 
by its presence. The absent one is 'patriotism'; the one present is 'oppor- 
tunism.' 

" He never had even the instinct of ' patriotism '; the enfeebling doctrine 
of humanity entered too largely into his composition for that to find a lodgment. 
An affectionate regard for the whole human race is more commendable in a 
' pope ' than in a ' patriot' What patriot, what devoted son of his fatherland, 
could, as he did, in his ' kin beyond the sea,' view the commercial supremacy of 
England 'wrested from her,' and exclaim, 'I have no inclination to murmur at 
the prospect ' ? There is no ring of the patriot in such metal as that. 

" As for ' opportunism,' it is his guiding star, his one determining influence. 
' No one,' he says, in answer to the charge of having cloaked his real views with 
respect to Ireland, ' no one was bound, in my opinion, to assist by speech or 
vote any decision upon so great and formidable a question, until he should think, 
upon a careful survey of the ground of the assisting and opposing forces, that 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1§1 



the season for action had come.' To keep his eye on the political weathercock 
and note the set of the wind has ever been his rule of guidance. He is the high- 
priest of the doctrine of ' opportunism.' It was this that determined him finally 
to lay his axe at the root of what he had once so ardently defended as the 
depository of the 'truth,' 'so precious to the soul of man,' but which he after- 
ward described as 'the deadly upas tree,' the Irish Church. He has left on 
record that he had perceived that ' the wind was gradually veering round to that 
quarter,' and that was enough. The wind which would waft him into power 
and blow his adversaries to ' Davy Jones ' has ever been the wind to be watched ; 
for, as he naively remarks, ' all men do not perceive, all men do not appreciate, 
ripeness with the same degree of readiness or aptitude, and the slow must ever 
suffer inconvenience in the race of life.' A useful faculty for what he recently 
described himself, 'an old Parliamentary hand,' but a treacherous one. The 
politician who keeps his eye too closely on the weathercock is apt to forget that 
a ship in dangerous waters is often acted upon by the invisible under-current as 
much as by the wind, and to find himself, as Mr. Gladstone has done time and 
again, wrecked on unexpected rocks. As the leader of a party, that has been 
the never-varying result of his pilotage. It was the temptation of the 'oppor- 
tunity ' to secure a Parliamentary majority, by propitiating the votes of the solid 
phalanx of Irish Nationalists, which led him into his last and fatal pitfall. He 
digged a pit, and, lo ! he has fallen into it himself. 

" Distrusted and deserted by his lifetime political colleagues and rejected 
by the nation, what will be his political future? He has candidly admitted he 
cannot himself prognosticate. Twenty-three years ago he forewarned the world 
that there might be ' a third political death or transmigration of my spirit.' 
What might then, or may yet, be made to turn on that ambiguous phrase, who 
can say? As 'the music of the moon sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin- 
gale,' who can tell ? No man else than he, even if he can." 

Such was the life's career of the man whom Mr. Parnell mistrusted. Who 
shall say : he was not justified ? 

Unfortunately for the credit of the Irish race, in Ireland, it was not to those 
who had devoted their lives for Ireland's regeneration that they gave allegiance. 
It was to the priesthood ; and, no matter what can be said in justification of the 
action of that priesthood, in connection with Mr. Parnell's closing days, it will 
ever remain a dark stain upon the fair name of Ireland and Ireland's priesthood. 



182 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

From " time immemorial" England has endeavored, by its emissaries, to prej- 
udice Rome against the Irish people. She used her influence and power, as 
did she always, to coerce the weak ; but this time it was a most infamous com- 
pact which she endeavored to make with the Pope : — It was a compact with a 
tyrant against the leader of a race — oppressed, but nevertheless the only nation 
which, against every persecution, defended Rome and added to the papal ex- 
chequer. And Rome aquiesced in the petition of her hereditary enemy to force 
the people of Ireland — through their religious zeal — to do its bidding. There 
is no doubt about this. And it is, to say the least, regrettable that because of 
this private life of Mr. Parnell the clergy of Ireland hounded him from the 
leadership and used means for this end which we had hoped were buried in the 
past. 

And here I shall, in the words of one of his colleagues — who deserted him 
at the last — give what I consider to be a pretty truthful estimate of Mr. Parnell : 

" The strength of Parnell was character rather than intellect. But the 
more you say in depreciation of the intellectual side, the more you at the same 
time raise the estimate of his strength of character. What that strength was, 
the whole world has learned to know. This terrible strength of will and 
tenacity of purpose were devoted to noble and wise ends ; but the qualities re- 
mained the same amid their diverse employment. Parnell defying and conquer- 
ing the whole British Parliament was not a more picturesque, or daring, or 
potent figure than Parnell fighting week after week his desperate and forlorn 
struggle against the Irish nation. 

" No words can adequately describe his influence over his followers. A 
struggle like that of the Irish is bound to bring to its foremost ranks men of 
unusual strength of character, and amid the followers of Mr. Parnell there were 
many with a will as stubborn, a resolution as inflexible as his own, and yet all 
these were as clay in the potter's hands when he chose to exercise his power , 
and his subjugation of his race, restless, fissiparous, so widely separated, and 
torn with faction, into one great composite, united, and absolutely obedient 
whole, is one of the most remarkable achievements of political leadership in the 
history of mankind." 

It was this psychic power of his which led the people of Ireland so close to 
victory ; and it was this mighty mind which, by Mr. Gladstone's dictation, a 
minority of the people of Ireland desired to crush. As says Tacitus : " Out of 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 183 



their own lips " can we " flagellate them." Their own apologetic sayings do not 
need recapitulation here. We are nearingthe end of the grand career of Charles 
Stewart Parnell, and it will be far more pleasurable to me to devote the last 
pages of this work to telling yet more of his brilliant efforts for Irish autonomy 
and of his personally great character. 

Here are some of the noble characteristics of this great Irishman, which I 
omitted in the earlier part of the work. As a matter of fact, the estimate of a 
man can be pretty safely gauged by the instinctive estimate of him by children 
and dumb animals. And, in this connection, it is not inappropriate to quote 
the words of Charles Dickens, who said — speaking of children : " Is it not a 
beautiful thing that those who so lately came from God should love us ? " Chil- 
dren do not love those whose natures are unkind ; and I do not believe that 
a man to whom children " take " could be ill-natured. Goethe, Goldsmith, By- 
ron, and particularly Shelley, tell of this peculiar natural force, and, during every 
age, the great writers have told of it. Hence I use the idea to the more per- 
fectly describe the nobility of the character of Mr. Parnell. 

He was extremely fond of children and of dumb animals. At one time, 
when he was a magistrate of Wicklow County, he fined a man heavily for 
cruelty to a donkey. When little children were near, his reserve at once disap- 
peared and he enjoyed their innocent companionship as would one of themselves. 
"It used to be a curious sight," said a very intimate friend of his, "to see this 
great leader, a man whose very name affected the destinies of the greatest Em- 
pire in the world, take a little child on his knee and fondle it as if it were his 
own." In this fact is contained the broader fact — widening into a greater truth : 
He too was loved by them, and he seemed to take keen delight in the affection- 
ate caresses of " those who so lately came from God "; the instinct of those 
little innocents taught them that a great and good man was there, and, through 
them, Providence indicated the man. And in the peace of the contact with 
those little ones what a contrast there was between the Parnell among the inno- 
cents and Parnell fighting Ireland's battle in the House of Commons. As said 
a colleague of his : 

"The House of Commons is as sensitive as a barometer to personal char- 
acter, and it always felt the full force of this extraordinary man's strength when 
he rose to address it, and yet to a stranger there would be no indication what- 
ever of the strength. He spoke in a somewhat low tone of voice, and often 



184 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



with an inattention to his audience that made the speech sound more like a 
soliloquy than words addressed to other men. But on rare occasions there were 
outbursts of that raging fire of fierce and devastating passion that burned within. 
Then the whole tone of the voice changed. It had a hoarse, sullen sound ; the 
mouth became almost cruel, and the right arm was held forth in denunciation. 
I have seen the House of Commons literally quail before one of those outbursts 
of savage, though apparently cold, rage, and the remark was once made by a 
colleague that he looked almost like an Invincible in one of those accesses of 
passion. He himself hated speaking, and always went through agonies of nerv- 
ousness when he had to prepare, and even after he had begun. The hands twitch- 
ing behind, the nails dug into the palms, showed the price he had to pay." 

But it was among his colleagues that he exercised the most profound feel- 
ings of love and homage. One of them told me that although his manner 
seemed to be cold toward him when he was first elected as a colleague of Mr. 
Parnell, "he so impressed me with his extraordinary oneness of character and 
unflinching patriotism, that I soon began to love him." A most striking ex- 
ample of this occurred when one day Mr. Parnell, who was at the time very ill, 
came to a meeting of the Irish party, at which some unpleasant matters were to 
be presented for his consideration. In consequence of his association with 
Capt. O'Shea, Mr. Biggar, who was Mr. Parnell's earliest parliamentary friend and 
colleague, had often hit him hard concerning it ; but when the chief, who had 
dragged himself to the meeting, even against his doctor's orders, suddenly said 
that he must leave, as he was so unwell, Mr. Biggar forgot his hatred of the 
O'Shea association ; his old love for Mr. Parnell rushed in upon him like a tor- 
rent, and, in the passion of his renewed affection, he ran from the room and 
burst into tears. 

No political leader ever begat such whole-souled devotion as this among his 
followers, and the misery of those later days, when, because of his one fault, 
they were induced to secede from his leadership, caused as many heartaches as 
though they were lovers who had been separated. 

But, nevertheless, there was also a black treachery in that secession and in 
the manner of its conception. The tumult of feigned and overrated moral hor- 
ror which they bred among them and thrust upon the people of Ireland at this 
time is unparalleled in the history of ingratitude. Not a man among them who 
was particularly less venal than Mr. Parnell — but it was found out in his case ; 




/fa'&4**J £)a^£& 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1^5 



the world knew of it ; and, in that dark hour, when his heart was wrung, they 
forgot his extraordinary services for Ireland and stabbed him deeper than his sin. 
The awful miseryof this treachery upon the part of a section of his colleagues 
must have crushed his soul — the soul of a man whose sensitiveness and love for 
the weak or oppressed were so strong ; and, no matter what can be said in de- 
fense of it, there can be no doubt but that those who prompted this secession 
and split in the Irish party are measurably responsible for his so early death. 
"Not a man among them all was imbued with such sterling patriotism, and, al- 
though in the earlier pages of this volume I have amply proven this, it is strictly 
appropriate to quote, even in these closing words, from his famous speech at 
Galway in 1880. He then used this remarkable passage : " I wish to see the 
tenant farmers prosperous ; but, large and important as is the class of tenant 
farmers, constituting as they do, with their wives and families, the majority of 
the people of this country, I would not have taken off my coat and gone to this 
work if I had not known that we were laying the foundation in this movement 
for the regeneration of our legislative independence." And, writing of him at 
that time, Mr. O'Connor says: "I think the figure he makes at that epoch fs 
worthy of all that has ever been said of his unselfish devotion, his untiring labors, 
his reckless daring, for the cause of Ireland." And, believing all this of him, 
and more, Mr. O'Connor seceded from him. It is, to my mind, incomprehen- 
sible how Mr. Parnell's colleagues, or any portion of them — themselves patriots 
— could have, at the dictation of a man whom past experiences should have led 
them to mistrust, seceded from and reviled the great leader whose existence was 
pledged "for the regeneration of Ireland's legislative independence." And, 
curiously enough, here is what one of the seceders said about the attacks which 
were made against Mr. Parnell at that time: "To see this mighty leader the 
target for every drab and scullion who wished to rise into notoriety on the 
corpse of his reputation and his great place, as a potent, successful, and loved 
leader of a people from servitude to liberty, it was more than flesh and blood 
could bear ; and to-day, with time to cool my blood, I say deliberately that, 
next to Mr. Parnell, the greatest factor in producing the destructive war in 
which, for a time, all Ireland's hopes of liberty seemed destined to perish, were 
some of his early assailants." 

It is a most extraordinary anomaly how this secession could have occurred. 
In August, 1885, Mr. Parnell, in a speech delivered by him at a banquet which 



28(3 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

was given to him in Dublin, said concerning those same colleagues who deserted 
him — and it will be well for the reader to notice that in this speech he does not 
take to himself the credit of what he had done for Irish autonomy ; he always 
desired, and expressed the desire, that his colleagues should be in the front — his 
great mind directing, but they receiving the credit : " I feel convinced that I 
interpret your sentiments best and most fully, as I certainly express my own, 
when I say that each and all of us have only looked upon the acts — the legisla- 
tive enactments which we have been able to wring from an unwilling Parliament 
— as means toward an end, that we would have at any time in the hours of our 
deepest depression and greatest discouragement, spurned and rejected any meas- 
ure, however tempting, and however apparent for the benefit of our people — if 
we had been able to detect that behind it lurked any danger to the legislative 
independence of our land. And although during this Parliament, which has 
just expired, we may have said very little about Home Rule — very little was 
said about legislative independence — very little about repeal of the Union — yet 
I know well that through each of your hearts the thought of how those great 
things might be best forwarded was never for a moment absent, and that no 
body of Irishmen ever met together who have more consistently worked, and 
worked with a greater effect, for that which always must be the hope of our na- 
tion until its realization arrives. We might, I say, refer to those legislative 
achievements. We might refer to the Land Act, an admirable measure in its 
way, even an unthought-of measure since many of us have come into political 
life. We might refer to the Arrears Act. We might dwell on the Franchise 
Act, under which almost manhood suffrage has been conceded to Ireland. We 
might recall to our recollection the Redistribution Act, under which, despite the 
open hostility of one party and the hardly-concealed envy of the other, we suc- 
ceeded in getting in the new Parliament the full representation of Ireland with- 
out the loss of a single man. But these things, although important in them- 
selves, are not, as I have said, the end and aim of our existence as a party ; and 
although we cannot refuse, and never have refused — although we have always, 
and wisely, I think, made it part of our programme to gain for Ireland such 
concessions as might be got at the while, provided we did not sacrifice greater 
and more enduring national interests; yet we have always got before us that we 
were sent from this country, not to remain long in Westminster, but to remem- 
ber that it was for us to look upon our presence there as a voluntary one, and 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1^7 



to regard our future — our legislative future — as belonging to our own native 
country of Ireland." 

And then he paid this tribute to his colleagues and their allegiance to his 
policy : " I can only say as regards myself that those services have been my con- 
stant admiration ; that I have marvelled that it was possible for any nation, for 
any country, to get together such a body of men under any circumstances ; but 
that it should have been possible for Ireland in her position, with all her talent, 
her supposed best talent, divorced from her, with the terrible engines and means 
which have been used to terrify, to cajole, and to persuade her sons to enlist 
under another flag than her own — it is a marvel to me, it seems to me that it 
must have been a dispensation of Providence that it could have been possible 
for our country to have found such sons and to have been served as she has been 
served during the five years of the Parliament of 1881 to 1885. And what is 
our present position ? It is admitted by all parties that you have brought the 
question of Irish Legislative Independence to the point of solution. It is not 
now a question of self-government for Ireland, it is only a question as to how 
much of the self-government they will be able to cheat us out of. It is not 
now a question of whether the Irish people shall decide their own destinies and 
their own future, but it is a question with, I was going to say our English 
masters', but I am afraid we cannot call them masters in Ireland — it is a question 
with them as to how far the day — that they consider the evil day — shall be 
deferred." 

Up to the last he had the same affection for his colleagues — the same 
mastery of self-consciousness concerning his own greatness. In almost every 
public utterance of his that same " not-me-but-jy^-have-done-it generosity of 
his was apparent; and his last words, when, deserted by many of those whom 
he had brought into political prominence, he was lying on his death-bed, his 
affection for them and his extraordinary patriotism asserted themselves, and he 
said: "Give my love to my colleagues and the Irish people." I do 
not believe it possible that those who seceded from him could have remembered 
these things, and, in the main, I blame those clerical influences which were 
forced on by England and used to induce the people of Ireland to desert their 
Chief for the disastrous happenings of the past ten months. 

There is yet another remarkable instance of Mr. Parnell's strategic insight 
into the best methods by which Irish legislative independence could be gained. 



]_88 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

As said Mr. Gladstone of him : " He was able to say what he had to say with 
greater point, more clearly, and in fewer words than any other man." The oc- 
casion to which I refer, and which should be of great interest to Irish-Ameri- 
cans, was when speaking at the banquet which was given to Mr. P. A. Collins, 
of Boston, Mass., in London on July 23, 1885. He said: "It is for those at 
home, for the man who is riding the horse to judge as to whether the fence shall 
be rushed or taken slowly ; and being to some extent myself in the position of a 
jockey, I won't say a suitable one, but as the rider at the present moment I 
desire to give my own opinion to-night, that the situation in Ireland, just at 
present, at all events, demands cautious riding, and that we may, perhaps, find 
that we shall have got over the fence without a fall if we put our steed slowly 
at it upon the present occasion ; and I am sure that those of my colleagues who 
know my own disposition will agree with me that none of us would for a single 
moment shrink from rushing the fence if we thought that the safety or success 
of our steed or of our country could be best secured in that way. We have had 
some projects mooted during the last few days for the revival of a movement 
upon the lines of the Land League. Speaking for myself, and without consult- 
ing with my colleagues, as one who has never shrunk from any risk, from any 
sacrifice in the times of the Land League, as one who may be willing to go 
much further than any of us went in the times of the Land League if the occa- 
sion required, and who does not feel himself less eager than he felt himself five 
years ago when he shook General Collins by the hand at Boston, Mass., I will 
say that I consider that our movement of this winter should be one distinguished 
by its judgment, its prudence, and its moderation." 

In this short extract can be found almost every attribute of Mr. Parnell. 
Caution was a predominant quality of his ; he never acted rashly — the stake, 
the liberty of his country, demanded caution. But there was, nevertheless, the 
same earnestness and fire, the same fierce determination, which I have already 
described, the same deference to the good work of his colleagues in every line 
of it. And this great leader who said : " Speaking for myself, and without con- 
sulting with my colleagues, as one who has never shrunk from any risk, from 
any sacrifice in the times of the Land League," etc., has been denounced from 
the Irish pulpit and platform — since his death — as a traitor. The situation is 
truly incomprehensible ; but it is pleasing to be able to record that Michael 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. I&9 



Davitt — as great a patriot as was even Parnell — denounced in turn those who 
had the mendacious effrontery to revile the dead leader. 

A very remarkable tribute to the steadfastness of principle of Mr. Parnell 
occurs in the 1879 supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; and, as it 
was written in November of that year, when the Times-PameW case was in the 
balance, and it was not known at the time that the letters were forgeries, it is 
more important testimony to the value of the greatness of his character. Here 
is the extract : " He is not an orator ; he shrinks from public display. He is 
handsome in feature, quiet in manner, pleasant in his intercourse with others ; 
perhaps slightly ideal in his aims, but thoroughly practical in the means he 
adopts for accomplishing them. His remarkable power over his followers is 
due to his absolute sincerity of purpose, the excellence of his judgment on all 
important questions, and the tenacity with which he maintains his conclusions. 
In the presence of the world he has brought an impulsive, discordant people 
into harmonious and almost unanimous effort for the highest privilege of a 
nation — the right of self-government." 

It is difficult to reconcile the utterances and actions of English statesmen 
toward Mr. Parnell at the different periods of his leadership. He was an enigma 
to them. Sometimes, when he thought it would advance his plans and ben- 
efit Ireland, he would listen to their proposals and, apparently, agree to vote this 
way or that ; but the moment he discovered the slightest sign of vacillation, he 
was again the unbending, uncompromising Irish patriot as was he during the 
last days of his career, concerning Gladstone and his proposals. 

Englishmen of every party — recognizing that at Mr. Parnell's bidding the 
"solid 86" Irish members could make or break a government — used the most 
flattering and fulsome compliments toward him and his colleagues, and even 
went so far as to use statements concerning their demands for Irish self-govern- 
ment that would, under the present Government, have lodged any Irish member 
in Kilmainham. For instance, here is what Mr. Joseph Chamberlain says, or 
rather said, in 1885, when the Ministry, of which he then formed one, was tot- 
tering : 

" I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen have the slightest 
conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule a sister 
country. It is a system which is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers, 
encamped permanently as in a hostile country. It is a system as completely 



190 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

centralized and bureaucratic as that with which Russia governs Poland, or as 
that which was common in Venice under Austrian rule. An Irishman at this 
moment cannot move a step; he cannot lift a finger in any parochial, municipal, 
or educational work, without being confronted, interfered with, controlled by 
an English official appointed by a foreign Government, and without a shadow 
or share of representative authority. The time has come to reform altogether 
the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle — to 
sweep away altogether these alien boards of foreign officials, and to substitute 
for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish business." 

And again, a little later, this British Privy Councillor says : 

" It is difficult for Englishmen to realize how little influence the people of 
Ireland have in the management of even the smallest of their local affairs, and 
how constantly the alien race looms before their eyes, as the omnipresent con- 
trolling power. The Castle, as it is called, is in Ireland synonymous with the 
Government. Its influence is felt, and constantly felt, in every department of ad- 
ministration, local and central, and it is little wonder that the Irish people should 
regard the Castle as the embodiment of foreign supremacy. The rulers of the 

Castle are to them foreign in race or in sympathy, or in both If the object 

of Government were to paralyze local effort, to annihilate local responsibility, 
and daily to give emphasis to the fact that the whole country is under the dom- 
ination of an alien race, no system could be devised more likely to secure its 
object than that now in force in Ireland." 

And this man — the moment he knew definitely that Mr. Gladstone was 
about to bring in a Home Rule bill— seceded from the Liberal party ; and 
seceded from it, and from his old leader, only because that party had been forced, 
by Mr. Parnell, to pledge itself to bringing in a bill for such legislative relief 
for Ireland as he himself advocated in the speech referred to. It is anomalous 
how these men, these English statesmen, could have dared, in the face of public 
opinion, to admit the disabilities of the Irish people, and the moment they got 
into power to turn their backs upon their utterances. As said Sir Charles 
Russell, concerning the condition of the Irish farmers at the beginning of the 
Parnell movement : 

" They (the farmers) stood trembling, with bated .breath and whispering 
humbleness, in the presence of landlord, agent, or bailiff, for that man's fate was 
verily in the hollow of their hands. He had no spur to industry, and no security 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 191 



that he should reap where he had sown." To-day, because of the efforts of Mr. 
Parnell, and despite the vacillatory action and utterances of England's ministers 
— the Irish farmer can stand erect as becomes a free citizen in a free com- 
munity ; and although the charter of his liberty may not yet be complete, he 
has derived solid protection from the legislation which the policy of Parnell and 
Biggar forced on in 1881, and the subsequent remedial legislation, which the 
action of the National League helped to accomplish. By such an unparalleled 
example, Mr. Parnell welded the people of Ireland together. He said: "The 
only aim of my life is to settle the Land question." And when he had ad- 
vanced that question within a measurable distance of success, he said : " I would 
not have taken off my coat if, at the end, I did not see the possibility of regain- 
ing our national legislative independence." " Thank God for it," the great mass 
of the people have been won, by his example, to bending their energies and 
fixing their hopes upon the constitutional means of redress which he advocated. 
By his statesmanship the people of Ireland were educated into a condition of 
thought that eliminated the feeling of despair which past efforts and unrequited 
services engendered. It is truly a pitiable story — that story of his latter days, 
when these things were forgotten in the heat of a religious controversy. But 
among the liberty-loving men of the world ; the foreseeing men — those whose 
names are household words in the cause of liberty — Mr. Parnell was revered as 
the greatest champion of liberty of this epoch. Here is what a celebrated 
American, Chauncey M. Depew, said of him on the occasion of a memorial 
service in the New York Academy of Music : 

" Ladies and Gentlemen : — We are here to pay tribute to the memory 
of a man who made an indelible impression upon his times, and performed in- 
calculable services for his country. In this audience are Irishmen of all creeds 
and widely divergent views on questions affecting Ireland, who, for the evening 
and the occasion, lay aside their antagonism to plant a flower upon the grave of 
one of the most eminent of their race. 

" The weaknesses and the errors of great leaders are an inseparable part of 
the elements which affect their fortunes while living, but when they are dead, 
the sum of their services to their people is their monument. A career crowded 
with battles, persecutions, imprisonments, defeats, and triumphs, concentrating 
in our individuality the hopes and fears, the passions and resentments of a nation 
for centuries, could not end without leaving behind controversies which time 



I 



192 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

and opportunity alone can heal. But we have not met to discuss or settle the 
party differences of the hour. It is our purpose to recognize and gracefully re- 
member the wisdom, the patriotism, the courage, and the superb generalship 
with which Charles Stewart Parnell organized and led his countrymen to within 
sight of the promised land of self-government. 

" In representative government, composed of different States, existing under 
diverse conditions, the pride of empire, the sense of security, the feeling of 
nationality, will always combine the united forces of the whole against the effort 
of any part to violently disrupt the State. While the fight lasts and the fever 
of nationality is on, they will be blind and deaf to the just demand of the dis- 
satisfied member. The necessity of the disaffected and injured Commonwealth 
is a competent and incorruptible leader and a united and loyal representation in 
the Federal Congress. Such a commander, with devoted followers, will know 
no party except that which recognizes his demands, will permit no measures to 
pass until the petition of his people has been heard and its prayer answered. 
This ideal leader was Charles Stewart Parnell. The time was not yet ripe for 
this new force. It was a needed preparation, both for the Irish people and the 
Imperial Parliament, that the old methods should be fairly tried under a leader 
of ability and integrity. He was found in that picturesque and most interesting 
personality, Isaac Butt. He tried to consolidate Irish representation for home 
rule. He was compelled to accept candidates who cared more for their Liberal 
or Tory affiliations than for Irish measures. He vvas surrounded by members 
who feared the social ostracism of London society, and longed for the rich places 
in the British civil service. 

" Yet this brilliant, courageous, undaunted patriot, struggling with poverty, 
besieged by bailiffs, sacrificing his professional income to his public duties, rose 
from every defeat, to begin anew, with unabated ardor and hope, his battle for 
justice and liberty. His fight was within the lines of his party, and he never 
succeeded in convincing its managers that Ireland had wrongs to redress, or of 
teaching them that coercion was not the way to settle Irish questions and give 
peace to the Emerald Isle. At the hour when the prospect was darkest, and 
the Irish were despairing of their cause, there appeared upon the field a cham- 
pion who presented none of the externals of heroism or leadership. No herald 
trumpeted his coming, no applause greeted his arrival. His comrades had not 
noticed his presence ; the enemy was not aware of his existence. He hated 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. I93 

publicity, but was destined to be the most conspicuous figure in the empire. 
He disliked to speak, and, whenever possible, avoided the forum or the plat- 
form, but he was to effectively voice the demands and principles which had 
taxed the resources of the greatest orators of a nation justly famed for elo- 
quence. He was cold in manner, undemonstrative, self-poised, imperturbable, 
neither elated nor depressed, and yet he became the idol of the most impulsive 
of peoples. 

" Parnell welcomed ability, and gave its possessor every opportunity for dis- 
tinction. His superiors in eloquence, like Sexton and Redmond ; in literature, 
like McCarthy and O'Connor ; in journalism or popular appeal, like Sullivan or 
O'Brien or Dillon or Harrington, were given positions where they could best 
serve. If he had ambitions other than for his country, they were never apparent. 
If he had likes or animosities, they never stood in the way of a useful man occupy- 
ing his proper place. The inspiration which started him in his career, and guided 
him in his work, was the motto of the Manchester martyr, ' God Save Ireland.' He 
proclaimed that any man who committed a crime was a foe to Ireland. He found 
that Home Rule was a subject for debate, which the House of Commons would 
wearily listen to and both parties unite to kill. And yet he resolved to win by 
moral force and constitutional methods. He became master of the rules of the 
House, and then used them to stop its business. With only three who dared 
follow, he attacked six hundred and odd, entrenched in the forms, the usages, 
and the traditions of centuries. ' No measures shall pass until the demands of 
Ireland are granted,' was his battle-cry. Tories were shocked, Liberals indig- 
nant, Radicals amazed, and the Speaker paralyzed. Isaac Butt feared the re- 
sult and withheld the support. Shaw thought the movement was not respect- 
able, and most of the Irish members agreed with him. 

"Though threatened with the unknown perils and punishment, and the 
frightful possibilities of being named by the Speaker; though threatened with 
suspension and put under the ban of personal and social ostracism ; though 
treated with derision in the House and contempt in the press, the undismayed 
and unruffled leader stood with his little band across the path of public busi- 
ness, demanding justice for Ireland. 

"When he entered Parliament at the head of 83 out of 103 representatives 
from Ireland, he held in one hand party power and in the other the homes and 
the fortunes of his people. He had returned in triumph. The Commons were 



194 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

bewildered. The calm and confident leader who had defied them with three 
followers now faced them with the larger number of the Irish members behind 
him. From that hour the Irish question became the foremost factor in British 
politics, and Parnell the most powerful member of the House of Commons. 
The time-worn policy of coercion put him in Kilmainham jail, and it became 
not the cell of a criminal, but the palace of an uncrowned king. The ministry 
which imprisoned him negotiated with him as with a conqueror. The question 
was not, on what terms will we set you free, but on what conditions will you 
accept release ? He did not mince matters. He demanded, and was accorded, 
the settlement of arrears of rent, the amendment of the Land Act, the abandon- 
ment of coercion, and the retirement of Mr. Forster, the coercion Minister. 
As Parnell, fresh from prison, entered the House, Mr. Forster, the defeated 
Minister, in a memorable speech, placed upon the brow of the victor this wreath, 
' I think we may remember what a Tudor king said to a great Irishman in for- 
mer times : "If all Ireland cannot govern the Earl of Kildare, let the Earl of 
Kildare govern Ireland." In like manner, if all England cannot govern the 
Honorable Member for Cork, then let us acknowledge that he is the greatest 
power in Ireland to-day.' The Tories hailed his alliance with delight. 

" But Parnell was insensible to flattery and unmoved by promises. He 
wanted measures and not pledges. He was cordial with the party which was at 
the moment most likely to adopt and pass his bills, but he cared nothing for 
either party. He became the potential force in the Government. He made 
and unmade cabinets. He hurled the Gladstone ministry from power and de- 
feated that of Lord Salisbury. He compelled the adjournment of Parliament 
and an appeal to the country. The conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule 
for Ireland is the most momentous event in the English politics of our genera- 
tion. He went to defeat and out of power on the issue, and has steadily kept 
it as the test of faith. The splendor of this statesman's acquirements and 
achievements obscures his defects and weaknesses. He has had, in his time, no 
equal as the leader of the opposition. 

"Peerless as an orator, resourceful, versatile, aggressive, positive, fertile in 
attack and skillful in retreat, he soon puts his adversaries in the wrong, and re- 
gains the confidence of his countrymen. It is only in power that he shows un- 
certainty of policy. When he is burdened with the responsibilities of govern- 
ment, it often happens that it is only after he has made up his mind that he is 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 195 



in doubt. But in the heat of battle and the fury of the fight this hero of many 
fields does not waver, and Home Rule is a desperate struggle until an Irish Par- 
liament convenes on Dublin Green. He saw that Parnell represented the Irish 
people, and formulated a Home Rule bill to meet their demands. His defeat, 
coming, as it did, through the defection of cherished friends, intensified his ardor 
and confirmed his purpose. He made the principle of Home Rule the cardinal 
doctrine of his party, and challenged Tories and Liberal Unionists to go to the 
country upon the issue. 

" Ireland no longer fights with one arm tied and the other held back by 
false friends ; Parnell freed them both. Ireland no longer struggles alone ; her 
cause is the stake of one of the great parties of England, and made so by 
Parnell. 

" Where all others failed, he succeeded. The weary waiting, the almost 
hopeless struggle of a century for local self-government, has nearly ended, and 
the victory is practically won, because, with the existing and growing sentiment 
and party support in England, Scotland, and Wales, backed by a united front 
from Ireland, the first act of the Parliament to be elected next year will be a 
complete and satisfactory measure of Home Rule. 

" The lesson of Parnell's life is the superiority of constitutional over revo- 
lutionary methods. He demonstrated that nothing is impossible for Ireland in 
the Imperial Parliament, if her sons are both united and wise. His agitation 
gave a distinct impulse to the English democracy, and educated and strengthened 
the radical element in British politics. 

',' Integrity and courage are common qualities in representative men, but 
with Parnell they were faculties and forces. It was Parnell's task and fame that 
he brought together four millions of his countrymen who had been for genera- 
tions torn by bitter feuds among themselves, and then converted the thirty mill- 
ions of alien race and faith in the Confederate States of the Empire to see the 
justice of his course, and join in demanding of the Imperial Parliament that Ire- 
land should be granted for her domestic affairs self-government and Home Rule. 

" As the rays of the morning sun for coming ages penetrate the shades of 
the cemetery of Glasnevin, and glance from the tomb of O'Connell, the Libera- 
tor, to the monument of Parnell, the Deliverer, may they illume the homes of a 
contented, happy, and prosperous people." 

This eulogy was delivered at a time when passions were aroused for and 



196 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 



against Mr. Parnell on both hemispheres; but Mr. Depew simply spoke of the 
man — the patriot — c'est tout, and that is and should be all. 

I have taken from the London Standard a very remarkable letter from 
the pen of Miss Anna Parnell — Mr. Parnell's sister — which I do not hesitate to 
publish in full. It is full of patriotic sentiment, and should have put to shame 
many of those who, after the great leader's death, endeavored to revile him : 

" You know, I think, that I never believed in the sincerity of the English 
Liberals' professions as to Home Rule. I thought they just intended to play 
on until they had abolished the House of Lords and the Established Church, 
and by our exertions got other things that the English people want, but are too 
stupid to take by themselves. Then the promoted democracy would be freed 
from its domestic difficulties and could turn its whole attention to giving us our 
deserts and teaching us our place. I was always frightened, too, at the tend- 
ency we have shown since the Phoenix Park murders to adopt a servile atti- 
tude toward the English, and to reward trifling advances on their part with a 
disproportionate measure of recognition. I was afraid these manifestations 
might not always stop at words and formalities, and this fear has been justified 
by events. No doubt there were many others who shared my views, but re- 
frained from expressing them lest they might embarrass the action of our repre- 
sentatives. It seems to me now, however, that this total suppression of 
individual opinion was a mistake, and probably contributed to the monstrous 
growth of the Gladstone ' boom' till our English allies claimed, and were given 
the right, to put our leaders up or down — a claim that in itself shows their mental 
attitude toward us to be quite inconsiderate with a desire to restore our inde- 
pendence. The argument used by the Irish majority at the time they turned 
round — that we ought to make allowances for Mr. Gladstone's difficulties in his 
contest with English public opinion — is essentially a two-edged weapon. It is 
precisely because these difficulties are so great that any friends we have in the 
English camp must be thoroughly in earnest and uncompromising on the 
Radical principles which support our rights, if they are ever to be of the slight- 
est use to us. Our guiding idea hitherto has been, roughly speaking, that if we 
can only persuade the English that we are too good ever to differ from them, 
they will cut our traces, under the belief that they are unnecessary, and that we 
shall continue to follow their lead of our own free will ; but different people see 
things in different lights, and we may have put the idea into their heads that if 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J 97 



they can govern our minds there is no reason why they should not govern our 
bodies too. We may have made them think that since their efforts at our pub- 
lic instruction in private virtue have been attended with such happy results so 
far, it would be a pity to release us from the obligation of following their curric- 
ulum just yet. I hope the Cork candidate has not any of their virtues, such 
as generosity, in his cargo ; they are too costly (to the objects of them) for poor 
people like us ; we had better be satisfied with justice. And I hope there will 
be no strong language used on either side at the election, as I cannot see the 
use of it for either side. The majority might prove the late member to be the 
vilest creature who ever lived, without improving their position in the least, since 
he would not have been the less entitled to fair play for that, and fair play he 
did not get ; on the other hand, if the minority proves the majority to be mur- 
derers, or any other kind of felons, they do not gain anything so far as the 
election goes, for a simple murderer would be a good deal safer than a man of 
the most exalted virtue whose speech was subject to such strange eclipses that 
when he said, ' This is my unalterable determination,' you would have to take 
for granted the addition, ' Unless English Liberals wish me to alter it.' " 

It is from such utterances that the truth can be learned. But Miss Parnell's 
letter leads us back — back to the influences which first opposed, then upheld, 
and finally rejected Mr. Parnell as leader of the Irish people. It is indeed a 
strange political history — this fight of an Irish Protestant for Catholic Ireland's 
autonomy ; but it is all the more strange because that, at the beginning, it was 
fought against the Catholic priesthood. Then, when, despite their influence, 
he became successful, they fawned upon him, and more than one of them risked 
suspension (to wit : Canon John O'Mahony, of Cork) to uphold him as leader. 
But when his best life's work was done, and because of a private venality an 
English statesman said "he must be dethroned," they not only deserted him, 
but heaped anathemas upon him. But the cause does not lie in this. It has a 
far deeper root. 

I do not wish to deal in iteration ; I do not wish, if I could help it, to 
recall these things, but I am forced to it, if I shall only tell the truth, as I said 
in my opening chapter. For instance, and in illustration of how he was op- 
posed in the beginning, Doctor McNulty and almost the entire priesthood of 
Meath opposed his election for that county. Luckily, one or two priests in 
Kells and Navan advocated his return ; but, as a matter of fact — although he 



198 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

was elected by a large majority— he would not then have been selected to rep- 
resent Meath only for the patriotic endeavors of the young men of Kells and 
Navan, chiefly concerned in this contest being Mr. George Saul, of Kells, him- 
self a nephew of one of the priestly opponents of Mr. Parnell. 

I have already alluded to how these same priesLs and bishops turned from 
opposition of him to energetic support, and I have also shown how that support 
was suddenly changed to the most vindictive denunciation. I shall not dwell 
upon this — it is, in the heat of the present controversy, too unripe for discus- 
sion. In years to come, when all that has happened in the past — or rather 
when the events of the recent past (that period during which his memory was 
endeavored to be blackened) — will have been forgotten, then will some historian 
do him justice. As a matter of fact, the life of any man cannot be properly 
digested and put into book shape until after his death. Prejudice is the strong- 
est element against success in the work of the historian — i. e., the historian of 
the time. After death men are either good or bad, great or valueless, to the 
generation among which they lived. As said an old writer to a literary friend 
of his : "And when you are dead, that world which you despised, and to which 
you have given so much, will begin to remember ' he was a great man.'" Prob- 
ably no such truth was ever written before — certainly not a more truthful 
truth — for truths are not truths when they are " used " for political purposes. 
This peculiar sentence of mine is proven amply by the political standpoints of 
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain, etc., who have time after time " swallowed 
their utterances." I do not hesitate to say here that political utterances, 
at any time, are not reliable. And I shall qualify this statement by saying 
that the utterances of Mr. Parnell and of the Irish party who followed him 
were the only reliable statements that, in history, ever have been made. I 
know this is very strong ; but it is the truth. They never occupied a false 
position in the Imperial Parliament ; Mr. Parnell decided otherwise. They 
were of one, unbroken idea ; they looked only for Irish autonomy. And who 
directed this ? One man — Charles Stewart Parnell— and nevertheless, when his 
one moment of trial came, they deserted him. Pshaw ! But, as said that great 
American speaker, " he should not now be forgotten." 

One of the peculiar features of Mr. Parnell's conduction of Irish affairs, as 
I have already told, was his extraordinary grasp of situation. Here is a case 
that happened just before the formation of the National League, when Mr. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 199 



Parnell spoke his ideas about the conditions that should exist — those between 
the Ulster Protestants and the Roman Catholics of the rest of Ireland. By his 
advice the following manifesto was issued : 

" Fellow-Countrymen : There is evidence that in parts of Ulster the 
opponents of land reform are endeavoring to create disunion between North 
and South. If these persons confined themselves to facts and fair arguments, 
the public would have no reason to complain, for this is an age when every 
principle and every public movement have to account for themselves before the 
bar of public opinion. But when men come forward who assume a tone of 
friendliness to the tenant farmers, and then strike at them from behind sectarian 
barriers, and from a platform with which the present land movement has 
no relationship either of alliance or antagonism, we think it right to protest 
against such conduct and repel the slanderous calumnies which have been 
heaped upon us, and upon the just and noble cause with which we are iden- 
tified. We are accused of agrarian crime by the class who, as landlords, have 
been willing instruments in committing the greatest agrarian crimes (we quote 
the words of the Times) 'ever one nation committed against another.' We are 
accused of sectarianism by men who, in the same breath and on the same plat- 
form from which they make these charges, apply themselves to the Satanic 
work of striving to create discord and hatred between people who conscientiously 
differ in matters of religion. To the first of these charges we answer that 
agrarian crime is the natural outcome of our present land system, and those who 
sustain that system are responsible for the crimes that spring from it. The 
second charge, that of sectarianism, we brand as a foul and malicious falsehood, 
and challenge the traducers of ourselves, and those who co-operate us, to point 
out a single instance in which sectarianism has shown itself in our proceedings, 
or as being the effect of our proceedings. Every observer who has followed the 
course of our present agitation must be aware that Catholics — even the Catholic 
hierarchy and priesthood — are as much divided on the great question we advo- 
cate as if they were not members of the same religious community, a portion 
being anxious to retain a territorial caste, while others lean to the side of a 
peasant proprietary. As a matter of fact, the present agitation has resolved itself 
into a struggle, pure and simple, between the tenants and their friends on the 
one side, and the landlords, Protestant and Catholic, and their supporters, on 
the other. That the state of feeline we here describe exists throughout the 



200 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

other three provinces was clearly shown at the late general election, when, as in 
Roscommon, Mayo, and other places, Catholic gentlemen of the staunchest type 
and the oldest families were unseated solely on account of their not being suffi- 
ciently advanced on the question of land reform. If, then, the Catholics of the 
South give such evidence of their willingness to ignore party ties ; if they assert 
their right to differ, and maintain their right to differ, from the highest dig- 
nitaries of their Church on the great question of the day, are they to be met 
with denunciations and distrust ? are they to be left to fight the battle alone and 
unaided by the men of the North ? We think not ; we believe they will be met 
half-way ; we believe the men of Ulster will show the world that in the cause of 
justice, in the interest of the oppressed tenant farmers, they can raise themselves 
above the level of sectarian prejudice or party welfare. In this address we 
would prefer not touching on the question of religion, nor would we do so except 
to rebut falsehood and make known the truth ; and as some of the exaggerated 
statements put forward are calculated to mislead persons who do not look below 
the surface, we would meet these statements by calling attention to a few import- 
ant facts — facts which should be known to every farmer in Ulster. The first of 
these we take from the ' English in Ireland,' by Mr. Froude, who states that ' In 
the two years which followed the Antrim evictions, 30,000 evicted Protestants left 
Ulster for a land where there were no legal robbers, and where those who sowed 
the seed could reap the harvest' The Antrim evictions took place in 1772. 
The highest delinquents in those evictions were Lord Donegal and Mr. Upton, 
whose descendants are now foremost in hostility to the Land League. The 
second authority we give is Thorn's Almanack. Those who consult it for the 
present year will find that, leaving out the period of the famine, the number of 
emigrants who left Ulster from the 1st May, 1851, to the 31st December, 1878, 
was 732,807. It will also be found that from the year 1841 to 1871 the number 
of holdings above one acre and up to fifteen decreased by 103,941 in the prov- 
ince of Ulster. These figures require no comment; they tell plainer than we 
can how dearly the Protestant landlords of Ulster love the small farmers of 
Ulster. With these facts before their minds, we would ask the clear-minded, 
common-sense farmers of the North to judge of landlordism, not by its pro- 
fessions in the present, but by its conduct in the past. We would ask them to 
reflect calmly on the future, when, as Mr. Cousins, United States Consul at 
Birmingham, states, in an official report to his own Government, the British 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 201 



farmer, even if rents were abolished, would not be able to pay taxes and com- 
pete with America. This statement of a disinterested party, of a Government 
official to the Government he represents, is pregnant with meaning to the Irish 
farmer. It tells plainly that in the near future landlord and tenant cannot 
co-exist in these islands ; that Ireland must become one vast pasture-land in pos- 
session of an idle, extravagant landocracy, or a land covered with comfortable 
homesteads — homesteads in possession of contented, industrious farmers : indus- 
trious, because they no longer save that others may waste ; contented, because 
they no longer toil that others may live idle. On this plain issue we have taken 
our stand ; on this plain issue we appeal to the men of the North ; we appeal to 
them as countrymen and brothers ; we ask them to be with us in this great con- 
test ; to stand by us in this the hour of trial. We ask them to share our labors 
and our dangers, as, should victory crown our efforts — and crown them it must — 
we would ask them to share in the benefits and in the glory of our triumph." 

" What is there in this that should exercise any people ? " That is what an 
English Cabinet Minister said. But there is that in this manifesto which exer- 
cised more than ordinary commendation ; for it said : " .... In the near 
future landlord and tenant cannot co-exist in Ireland ; that Ireland (by this 
idea) must become one vast pasture-land in possession of an idle, extravagant 
landocracy." And herein was Mr. Parnell's greatest forte. His first and last 
wish was to ameliorate the condition of the Irish tenant farmers. As he said in 
Galway : " I should not have taken off my coat if I did not believe that, in the 
hollow of my hand, I held the reconstruction of our Irish Parliament and the 
regeneration of the farmers of Ireland." And again he said : " The great object 
of my life is to settle the land question" (Hansard, vol. cclxix., p. 783). 

As Mr. Healy's name has lately occupied much attention in the controversy 
concerning Mr. Parnell since his death, I think it not inapropos to tell some- 
thing of him in these closing pages. When Mr. Parnell was in America, in 
1879-80, the mass of correspondence, political and personal, which followed 
him immersed him in a sea from which he could not wade himself unless by 
the assistance of a secretary. He had previously made the acquaintance of a 
young Irishman, who was engaged as a clerk in a London business house and 
afterward as London correspondent of the Dublin Nation. This young man — 
who was no other than Mr. Timothy Healy — made a strong impression upon 
Mr. Parnell, and he requested Mr. Healy's presence in America by telegraph. 



202 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Upon the same day that he received the telegram Mr. Healy threw up his posi- 
tion, and the same evening he was on board ship to join the leader of the Irish 
race. It was the beginning of his political career. I shall say no more of it, 
or of him, except to tell something of his earlier life. Mr. Healy was born in 
Bantry, County Cork, in 1855. Bantry was also the birthplace of the Sullivan 
family, to whom Mr. Healy was connected by blood ties. He had peculiar op- 
portunities for becoming familiar with the awful horrors of the famine, for his 
father, at seventeen years of age, had been appointed Clerk of the Union at 
Bantry, and his occupation brought him into contact with all the dread realities 
of that terrible time. He had told his son that for the three famine years he 
never once saw a single smile. Outside the abbey in which the forefathers of 
Healy and the other men of Bantry are buried are pits in which many hundreds 
of the victims of the famine found a coffinless grave ; and Mr. Healy will tell 
you, with a strange blaze in his eyes, that even to-day the Earl of Bantry, the 
lord of the soil, will not allow these few yards of land to be taken into the 
graveyard, preferring that they should be trodden by his cattle. Reared in 
scenes like these, it is no wonder that Healy, whose nature is vehement and 
excitable, should have grown up with a burning hatred of English rule in 
Ireland. 

He went to school to the Christian Brothers at Fermoy ; but fortune did 
not permit him to waste any unnecessary time in what are called the seats of 
learning ; for at thirteen he had to set out on the difficult business of making a 
livelihood. It is characteristic of his nature that, though he has thus had fewer 
opportunities than almost any other member of the House of Commons of obtain- 
ing education — except such as his father, an educated man, may have imparted to 
him as a child — he is really one of the very best informed men in the place. He 
is intimately acquainted with not only English but also with French and with 
German literature, and the " rude barbarian " of the imagination of English 
journalists is keenly alive to the most delicate beauties of Alfred de Musset or 
Heinrich Heine, and could give his critics lessons in what constitutes literary 
merit and literary grace. Another of the accomplishments which Mr. Healy 
taught himself was Pitman's shorthand ; and shorthand in his case — as in that 
of Justin McCarthy and several other of his colleagues — was the sword 
which he had in life's beginning to open the oyster of the world. At sixteen 
years of age he went to England and obtained a situation as a shorthand clerk 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 203 



in the office of the superintendent of the Northeastern Railway at Newcastle, 
which is the foundation of that "ticket-nipper" episode in the biography of 
society journalism. Newcastle-on-Tyne, as those who have ever visited it will 
know, has a very large and a very sturdy Irish population, who take an active part 
in all political movements that are going on, and when Healy went there he 
found himself at once surrounded by countrymen who, if anything, held to the 
National faith more sturdily than their brethren at home. Probably he himself, 
if he were to trace the mental history of his political progress, would declare that 
in his case, as in that of so many other Irishmen, it was an English atmosphere that 
first gave form and intensity to his political convictions. At all events, the 
newcomer was not long at Newcastle when he was a persistent and an active 
participator in all the political strivings of his fellow-countrymen, and it speaks 
strongly of his force of character and their discrimination that, though yet but 
a stripling, he was chosen for several positions of authority. 

In March, 1878, he removed to London, partly for commercial and partly 
for journalistic reasons. He is distantly related to Mr. John Barry, M.P. for 
Wexford, and at that period Mr. Barry was associated with a large Scotch floor- 
cloth factory. Mr. Healy was employed as confidential clerk in this firm, and 
in connection with this part of his career an anecdote will not be uninstructive. 
While Mr. Barry was visiting an English provincial town in company with one 
of his then partners, the conversation turned on Mr. Healy, who was taking a 
prominent part in the discussion of the Land Bill. The results of his vigilance 
are now written in imperishable letters on the land legislation of Ireland ; but 
naturally he was represented to the English public as a mere mischievous imp 
who was interfering with the beneficent designs of the good man, Gladstone, 
and comments upon him were uncomplimentary. One of his detractors asked 
Mr. Barry's partner whether it was true that Mr. Healy had at one time been a 
clerk in his office, and the reply, " It was," was given as if these two words set 
the seal on all Mr. Healy's other crimes. " Yes," said Mr. Barry, taking up 
the conversation, "and that's about the only fact that will survive about your 
blank-blanked office " ; which is so far untrue that probably not even the em- 
ployment of the author of the Healy Clause will secure the floor-cloth firm from 
the waters of oblivion. 

As will be seen from this biographical sketch of Mr. Healy, he owed his 
political prestige and public advancement to Mr. Parnell, and, nevertheless, 



204 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

he is the one man who, after Mr. Parnell's death, fanned the flames that were 
engendered to destroy his character. Life is filled with such men. 

Up to the very end he fought the fight of patriotism against power ; even 
during that time of internecine strife which was stirred into flame by Mr. Glad- 
stone, and kept burning by the clerical party among his own followers, his first 
and last efforts, acts and utterances — although many of them were levelled against 
those whom he had brought into political prominence, and who deserted him 
because of one — only one personal venality — were always given for his first love, 
— his country. I shall not dwell upon the odious scenes that followed, in Ire- 
land and in the press, that remarkable meeting in Committee Room 15, in the 
House of Commons. At a later day, when the heat and passion of the now 
will have been forgotten, an impartial writer will chronicle these events as they 
are recorded in the book of doom. I shall pass over all these matters and sim- 
ply record that in the height of all this bitterness Mr. Parnell died in Brighton 
on October 6, 1891. The greatest spirit of the century ; the most resolute and 
potent Irishman who ever lived ; the only man who ever forced the most pow- 
erful nation in the world to bow to his will, passed away — Ireland lost her cham- 
pion, and how she mourned him I shall tell, from the account of his funeral, in 
the Dublin Freeman s Joiirnal oi October 17, 1891 : 

" The unexpected news of Mr. Parnell's death fell on Ireland like a stunning 
blow, producing stupor, amazement, and consternation. This sudden, untimely, 
tragic ending of a great and noble life awakened the profoundest grief among 
all parties, classes, and creeds of Irishmen. The reviling tones of hatred, cal- 
umny, and abuse — and even the voice of just and fair criticism — were, with just 
two insignificant exceptions in the Irish Press, hushed, and, let us hope, hushed 
forever so far as Parnell is concerned, in the eternal silence of the grave. He 
was remembered only as the Parnell of old — as one of the greatest Patriots we 
have ever known — as the Leader, and not alone the Leader, but the very 
Idol of the Irish Race. The memory of his former greatness and of all he 
suffered and endured for Ireland only remained. His fallen fortunes — his eclipse 
during the past few sad and terrible months — were remembered but to add an 
additional touch of poignancy to the overwhelming grief and bereavement of 
the Nation. Edmund Burke complained once of the hunt of obloquy which 
pursued him through life. So it was, too, alas ! with Charles Stewart Parnell. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 0(>5 



From the very opening to the very close of his public career he had to endure 
envy, calumny, hate, and pain. But 

IT IS ALL OVER NOW. 

' How peaceful and how powerful is the grave that hushes all,' as the poet sings. 
Nothing was heard on Sunday from that mighty mass of people which followed 
the Dead Chief to his last resting-place, but expressions of uncontrollable grief 
— the subdued sobbing and weeping of strong men and the loud wailing of 
women. The fascination of that impenetrable, inscrutable, and mysterious per- 
sonality ended not with his death. During life Parnell was, eminently, a man 
to enkindle enthusiasm and command devotion. The same potent influences 
rise even from his ashes, as the demonstration on Sunday proves. It was as 
pathetic a picture of mingled affection, devoted loyalty, and desolate bereave- 
ment as the streets of Dublin have ever witnessed. It was, indeed, a memora- 
ble funeral procession. Who that saw it will ever forget it ? 'I was at Parnell's 
funeral,' shall be a proud yet melancholy boast in days to come. It was a sin- 
gular, strange, and impressive event, the funeral of Mr. Parnell — from its open- 
ing in Brighton at noon on Saturday to its close on Sunday evening at six 
o'clock. 

DUBLIN WAS ASTIR 

before morning dawned on Sunday. The silence of the streets was broken by 
the tramp of men at a very early hour. Crowds converged on Westland Row 
from all points of the city and suburbs, though a cutting wind and a drizzling 
rain prevailed. The train conveying the body from Kingstown was more than 
an hour late, owing to a delay in starting the mail-boat at Holyhead, and an ex- 
ceedingly rough passage ; but the people waited patiently, notwithstanding the 
discomfort of the morning, in Westland Row and Great Brunswick Street. At 
last, at eight o'clock, the sad strains of ' The Dead March,' played by a brass 
band, announced the arrival of the cortege, and, as the hearse, with a body-guard 
of Gaels with Camans draped, and followed by Mr. Parnell's Parliamentary 
colleagues, passed between the thick files of people, every hat was raised, and 
cries and sobs of anguish rent the air. On the melancholy procession marched 
in a drenching downpour of rain to St. Michan's Church, Church Street. In the 
vaults of this sacred edifice the Brothers Sheares, who were executed in '98, are 



206 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

interred, and in the graveyard attached are buried Charles Lucas, the founder of 
the Freeman s Journal, and one of the first of the Irish constitutional patriots, 
and Oliver Bond, who sought in '98 by other methods to restore the freedom of 
Ireland. It is said the uninscribed tomb of Emmet is there also. Here, then, 
in this sacred edifice, rich with Irish National associations, the prayers for the 
dead, according to the ritual of the Protestant Church, were recited by the Rev. 
Mr. Fry, Rector of All Saints, Manchester. Is there any church in Dublin 
in which this sacred function could have been more appropriately discharged for 
the dead Irish Tribune? 

THE LYING IN STATE 

of the body of Mr. Parnell in the large circular room of the City Hall, to 
which it was conveyed after the services in St. Michan's Church, was another 
very impressive ceremonial. The coffin was placed on a low bier just below the 
massive statue Of O'Connell by Hogan, the base of which was draped with the 
well-worn and tattered colors of the two regiments of Volunteers raised by Sir 
John Parnell, the incorruptible Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, in Wicklow, 
and brought up from Avondale for the melancholy occasion. The coffin was 
entirely covered with the wreaths, artistically arranged by loving hands, and at 
its feet was raised the floral offering of Mr. Parnell's colleagues, a Celtic cross 
five feet high. To the right of the coffin was the statue of Charles Lucas, to 
its left the statue of Henry Grattan and the bust of Denis Florence M'Carthy, 
and inscribed on a white ground, hanging in graceful Venetian folds from the 
heavily draped pillars of the hall, were the last words of Mr. Parnell : 
' Give my love to my colleagues and to the Irish people.' 
" The hall, which was open to the public from ten till one o'clock, was visited 
by 30,000 persons. Meanwhile, from a far earlier hour than ten o'clock, prep- 
arations for the funeral procession were afoot. Special trains crowded with 
deputations, accompanied by bands, arrived from North, South, East, and 
West at the various termini of the metropolis, and poured their thousands on 
the streets. The weather continued inclement, yet even during the early fore- 
noon the city was thronged with people who moved about the streets unheeding 
the bitter wind and the rain, and the mud and slush below. The shadow of a deep 
desolation seemed to hang over all. The walls of the city were extensively 
placarded with huge posters, in heavy mourning borders, the letterpress of 
which was headed with the lines — 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 



207 



FUNERAL 

OF THE 

IRISH CHIEF, 

in large black letters, followed by particulars as to the order of the procession. 
Another poster, also heavily bordered in black, which attracted considerable 
notice, was the following : 

'HIS LAST WORDS. 

" My love to my colleagues and to the Irish People." 



" If I were dead and gone to-morrow, the men who are fighting against 
English influence in Irish public life would fight on still ; they would still be 
independent Nationalists; they would still believe in the future of Ireland a 
Nation ; and they would still protest that it was not by taking orders from an 
English Minister that Ireland's future could be saved, protected, or secured." 
' Charles Stewart Parnell, 

'At Listowel, September 13, 1891.' 

" While the deputations were assembling in processional order in St. 
Stephen's Green, and in the neighboring streets, every possible position that 
could afford a view of the procession along the line of route was occupied. 
The windows were crowded, the footways were thronged. The streets through 
which the procession was to pass from the City Hall to Glasnevin were literally 
swarming with men, women, and children — curious, interested, and sympathetic 
— every one, almost, wearing the emblem of the mourners, a piece of crape set 
off with green ribbon, and eagerly awaiting the appearance of the cortlge. 
Street vendors did a roaring trade in portraits of the Dead Patriot, and in bal- 
lads singing his virtues. From many windows hung 

GREEN FLAGS TRIMMED WITH MOURNING, 

from others floral wreaths were suspended ; and in the poorer portions of the 
city through which the procession passed — in Thomas Street, James's Street, and 
along the Northern line of quays — pictures of Mr. Parnell were liberally dis- 
played. The depth, reality, and intensity of the sorrow felt by the people — 
spectators as well as processionists — for the death of their Chief was unmis- 
takable. As the monster procession, starting from the City Hall at a quarter 
past two, wended its slow, sad, and solemn way to the mournful cadences of 
forty bands, through serried files of people — up Lord Edward Street, past 
Christ Church Cathedral, along Thomas Street, James's Street, down Steevens 



208 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Lane, crossing the Liffey at Kingsbridge, proceeding along the Northern line of 
quays, recrossing the river over Grattan Bridge, advancing up Parliament Street, 
passing the City Hall again, proceeding down Dame Street, past ' the Old 
House in College Green,' through Westmoreland Street, over O'Connell Bridge, 
up O'Connell Street, through Rutland Square, along Blessington Street, over 
Berkeley Road, through Phibsborough, and thence to Glasnevin Cemetery — the 
keening and clapping of hands of the women were frequently heard ; heartrend- 
ing sobs burst from many a man, and tears were seen on the cheeks of not a 
few. As the hearse approached every hat in the throng on each side was doffed, 
and prayers for the dead were muttered. It was, indeed, a spectacle to touch 
the most callous heart to see the hearse — a splendid vehicle drawn by four sable 
horses, with outriders in mourning costumes — the coffin on top, completely 
hidden by floral wreaths, and the crushed and bruised and sorrow-stricken col- 
leagues of the heroic, the militant, the kingly Irishman who lay dead inside sur- 
rounding it as pall-bearers. 

THE DEMEANOR OF THE PEOPLE 

throughout the trying day was magnificent for its solemnity, dignity, good order, 
and sobriety. It was apprehended, it is true, that evil and angry passions would 
be aroused, and that the laying to rest of the Great Irish Leader who is gone 
from us forever would be marked by riot and bloodshed. Thank Heaven 
there was nothing of the kind. Thank Heaven that not the slightest viola- 
tion of the law, that not the least infraction of the public peace marred 
this solemn and mournful occasion ; and the only way the services of the 
police were brought into requisition was in the aiding of the marshals and stew- 
ards to clear the way and preserve unbroken the march of the procession. 
From the opening of the sad proceedings to their close no hitch occurred ; no 
disturbance took place, no accident happened, and neither jarring note nor 
a word of anger nor imprecation was heard. It was half-past five ere 

GLASNEVIN CEMETERY 

was reached, and then, at six o'clock, just as the shades of night were falling, 
with the gathering gloom lighted up by a half-moon in a cloudless sky, after 
prayers had been recited, the dull thud of the earth clods on the coffin of 
Charles Stewart Parnell was heard amid murmurs of sorrow from the multi- 




Historic Flags in Avondale. 



HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 209 



tude thronging round. The tragedy of that terrible moment to the devoted 
colleagues of the Dead Chief may be imagined, but it cannot be described." 

I do not think it prudent to add to this sketch of Mr. Parnell's life. I only 
hope that within my limited space I have been able to do him even a partial 
justice. But I do feel that, if what I have written will only cause my readers to 
examine into the wonderful work, self-sacrifice, and determined patriotism of 
Charles Stewart Parnell, I shall have written it for good ; for no man who reads 
his life, and understands the great purpose which formed the basis of his heroism, 
will fail to be inspired with more or less patriotic feeling, and they must recog- 
nize and mourn with Ireland that liberty has lost one of her greatest and most 
fearless champions. 

A fitting close to this sketch is, to my mind, the poetic tribute of Mr. Pat- 
rick Sarsfield Cassidy, of New York, and as it entirely coincides with the spirit 
of my work, I give it in full — with the author's permission : 

" Rest to the chieftain ! Let him rest : 

His troubled heart's at peace. 
The poisoned barbs that pierced his breast 

At last, at last, must cease ! 
And what a high and noble heart 

That dauntless breast contained ! — 
Now let his foes weigh well their part, 

And boast what they have gained. 

" The courage of the bravest knight 

That shines on history's page ; 
In freedom's cause no truer light 

Has blazed in any age. 
A heart of flame controlled by mind, 

Calm, stately in its might ; 
The puissance of a soul designed 

To battle for the right ! 



Far down the future do I see 
Ride on that soul of flame 

A beacon to the brave and free, 
And magic in his name ; 



210 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 

Serene on Fame's eternal height, 
Beyond the bridge of stars, 

While lost in everlasting night 
Are those who wrought his scars. 

" And while the true-born man keeps trace 

Of acts that make men great, 
Parnell shall hold a chieftain's place, 

To memory consecrate ! 
His fault — one fault — 'twas shouted free 

In Venom's fierce cyclone ; 
Nor shouter paused to think if he 

Had right to cast the stone ! 

" View not that dead and dauntless face 

Ye self-approved who claim 
A Godlike, extra-human grace 

That here lives but in name ! 
Nor ye who panted for the hour 

To play the envious part, 
To slay the chieftain in his tower, 

And rend a nation's heart ! 

" Beside his bier pale Erin weeps 

With all a mother's woe ; 
No truer son her memory keeps, 

No braver shall she know. 
And down to time's remotest day 

Shall children's children tell 
The glory and the tragedy 

That disk the name — Parnell ! " 



THE END. 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Causes which led to Irish Disaffection — Sir Charles Russell's Opinion— Why 
Irishmen agitated for Repeal of the Union— Antiquity of Irish Writings — The 
Fiscal Condition of Ireland at the time of the Union — Gladstone's Treachery — 
Richard Cobden and the " Times." 

" In writing the history of a people, it is neither just nor reasonable to omit 
the record of its prevalent crimes. But it is one thing to relate these ; it is 
quite another thing to select the criminals of a nation as the special represent- 
atives of its ideas " (Lecky, vol. ii., p. 378). Unhappily this has been 

the selected habit of English writers and of the English press, concerning Ire- 
land, without regard to causes — or rather, if I may be again permitted to use 
Mr. Lecky's words, "without endeavoring to trace the effects to their causes, or 
making due allowance for circumstances and for antecedents." 

Of much more importance to this sketch is the fact that this, too, has been 
the consistent attitude of English statesmen toward Ireland. As a result of 
their not having examined into the causes of Irish dissatisfaction, and of the 
fugitive and irresponsible criminality which existed during this period, they 
proceeded upon the assumption that the entire nation was criminal, and they 
passed laws to repress what did not exist, and, by the severity of their oppression, 
goaded the people to justifiable revolt. 

English oppression was at all times the prime cause of the various attempts 
which have, more or less successfully, been made by the Irish leaders to force 
justice from the British Government — or to impose upon it the advisability of 
repealing their most noxious statutes. But this fundamental cause for rebellion 
was whetted, from time to time, by such enormous outrages as the conspiracy 
of the Union ; the ruinous increase of taxation ; the inhuman treatment of 
political prisoners or suspects ; and a hundred other evidences of England's de- 

(213) 



214 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

termination to crush the national spirit of the people, and drive them from the 
country by the deliberate ruin of its prosperity. 

From the first day of the passing of the act of the Union the country be- 
gan to lose rapidly that prosperity which she had gained during the preceding 
eighteen years of legislative independence. 

A very remarkable indorsement of this opinion is given by Sir Charles 
Russell, late Attorney-General of England, in his opening speech for the de- 
fense in the celebrated Parnell- Times case. He says : 

" Herein, in my humble opinion, is the root of the Irish difficulty, that 
from the moment that act (the act of the Union) passed, the governing class 
in Ireland — mainly the landlord class, mainly the ascendency class, mainly the 
class separated by religion and often by race from the bulk of the people — 
ceased to be thereafter under the influence, the control, the impulse of the 
opinion of the people amongst whom they lived, and from whom they derived 
the means of supporting their stations of dignity and of affluence. In a word, 
they ceased to be patriotic. 

" My Lords, from that date they ceased to care for or to regard Irish 
opinion. They looked to England in times of trouble and of difficulty. They 
cried, as from the housetops, that they alone were the class to be depended 
upon." 

But they did more than this : they assumed — and no doubt justly — that this 
act was passed for their benefit, and to assist them in asserting an arrogance 
never before attempted by the landlords of any country. This was naturally 
resented by the people ; the partial harmony that heretofore existed between 
landlord and tenant now entirely ceased to exist, and the governing or landlord 
class began to absent themselves from Ireland, and to spend the rents, drained 
by them from the Irish people, in England or on the Continent. 

These are some of the reasons why Irishmen — as Irishmen — deemed it not 
alone desirable, but necessary to agitate for repeal. (As I advance I shall go 
more closely into the subject.) From the standpoint of patriotism they were 
in duty bound to so conspire and agitate ; and if their efforts were crowned 
with success, no paean of praise ever sounded which could out-herald that which 
would be raised for the efforts of Ireland's patriots. 

But unfortunately their efforts were not crowned with success, and as a 
result they are told that their " mad attempts were childish and only in keeping 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 215 

with what could be expected from the denizens of Colony Hatch " (Colony 
Hatch is a lunatic asylum outside London), and these are the words of an Eng- 
lish Cabinet minister. 

I hope I shall not be understood as partial when I make the following com- 
parison : Would a man starving, or rather could a starving man, question the 
advisability of whether it was better to commit suicide or steal ; or would he 
be, in humanity, entitled to take a life to save his own ? That is a question 
Which has long puzzled the most advanced divines and doctors of law ; but here 
it is not the question. The question is, are not a people justified in seeking, 
by any means, to redress a wrong ? Even this is questionable, but where can 
we stop upon such an argument ? 

I say that the suicidal policy of the extinction of the leaders would be of 
vastly more injurious import to the cause of Ireland than was it to Poland, 
Hungary, or to France. 

The Irish people are a people of sentiment ; the suicide of their leaders 
would mean to them that their cause was a lost one. Ergo, the fact remains 
that not one of Ireland's patriots was ever a suicide — unless where his life was 
already forfeited. 

Herein we have the strength of our nationality — we are not cowards. But 
I must return to my subject. 

The difference between the matter at the student's disposal concerning Irish 
history previous to the O'Connell movement and since that period, is most re- 
markable. Look where you will in the older classical writings, and you will 
find mention of the literary and civil advancement of the ancient Irish ; matters 
of the minutest importance are detailed. Tacitus, in his life of Agricola (ist 
century), speaks with praise of the greatness of " the people of that island." The 
elder Pliny and many other famous writers of the earlier days of Christianity 
devoted many pages to Ireland. 

That wonderful compilation, the Annals of the Four Masters ; the histories 
of the Abbe MacGeoghegan and many others equally celebrated have detailed to 
modern' readers the history of early Ireland in a manner, not less profuse and per- 
haps more reliable than those wonderful accounts of ancient Rome and Greece, 
which have given to the literary world the basis of its best classics. 

How different is it to-day. We have practically no classical works upon 
modern Ireland, and nothing at all of a continuous story of the inside history of 



216 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

the country during the past fifty years. Many writers have compiled fugitive 
volumes concerning one or more of the peculiar incidents or movements of Irish 
history during the present period ; but a thorough and comprehensive history 
of the Irish people and movement from 1843, or let us sa y 1829, to the death of 
Charles Stewart Parnell, has never been written. I have already indicated the 
probable reasons why this was not adequately attempted, and although the same 
difficulties, to a greater or lesser extent, beset me, I hope to advance farther into 
the subject. And if, from the matter at my disposal, I am not less fortunate 
than were my predecessors, I can, at least, claim to have faithfully endeavored 
to perpetuate connectedly, in writing, the principal events of Irish history dur- 
ing the important period which I have elected to treat in these pages. 

Before I come to that most interesting and most important portion of this 
composite sketch which deals directly with the life and achievements of Mr. 
Parnell it is not alone necessary, but will prove valuable and interesting in the 
connection between 1829 and the Parnell movement, to treat briefly of those 
efforts of the Irish people, which are now generally known only in name to nine- 
tenths of the Irish people, and not well understood by even that one-tenth. I 
speak of the movements of 1848 and 1865-7. I question if there are many even 
among those Irishmen, whose sympathies are distinctly with their country, who 
fully comprehend the immense necessity which existed at these periods for such 
uprisings. It will be my endeavor to explain them. 

Lest prejudiced readers should here regard me as partial, I shall quote 
directly from English writers, and I think that, from these extracts, it will readily 
be admitted that the necessity existed for such agitation and even force, as was 
employed by the Young Irelanders, the people of Forty-eight and the Fenian 
leaders of '65 to '67. 

Here is a comparison made by one of the most anti-Irish Englishmen of 
his time. It was written in 1877 : 

" It is the fashion to sneer at the leaders of '48 and their plot ; at the former 
as rash idiots, at the latter as the most flagrant of follies. This is more than un- 
fair ; it is a folly in itself. Englishmen do not usually regard the conspirators 
of other countries than Ireland as lunatics, or treat them and the causes they 
advocate with contempt. For instance in their own eyes the Venetians of '48, 
and Daniel Manin their leader, were right altogether and heroic ; while the 
Smith O'Brien of the same date, and his followers, were anything rather than 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875, 217 

right or heroic. Now, to those who knew the respective peoples and individu- 
als, and who can compare them calmly, there is no very mighty difference 
apparent. We are ourselves no enthusiastic admirers of either, but of the two 
we cannot help thinking that the Irish plotters were the superior men. Not a 
few of those same much-censured Irishmen of '48 have distinguished themselves 
since. Several of them have won praise and even title from the government 
that prosecuted them as felons. While the Venetians of '48, with scarce an ex- 
ception, have made no figure in Italy, or elsewhere, since." 

This extract is, of course, only the personal opinion of an individual Eng- 
lishman ; but that Englishman's writings on Ireland are filled with bitter de- 
nunciations of our race and methods for self-assertion, and are accepted by most 
Englishmen as containing an impartial history of the movements which he had 
the effrontery to record. The fact, which I have quoted, he could not, no mat- 
ter how eager to do so, distort. 

But as I have already stated that it is not my intention to tell only the good 
points, and that my sketch will be truthful as well as logical, I quote from page 
378 of the second volume of the distinguished historian, Mr. Lecky, in which he 
agrees with the necessity of exposing the truth on both sides. Here is what he 
says : 

" In writing the history of a peop'le, it is neither just nor reasonable to omit 
the record of its prevalent crimes. But it is one thing to- relate these, it is quite 
another thing to select the criminals of a nation as the special representatives of 
its ideas. It is peculiarly necessary that the history of such a nation as the Irish 
should be written, if not with some generosity, at least with some candor ; that 
a serious effort should be made to present in their true proportions both the 
lights and the shades of the picture ; to trade effects to their causes, and to 
make due allowance for circumstances and for antecedents. When this is not 
done, or at least attempted, history may easily sink to the level of the worst 
type of party pamphlet." 

To my mind, the pith and true value of a historical sketch is herein 
perfectly described, and I shall endeavor to advance upon these lines. But 
before dwelling upon the criminal aspect of the case, I beg to be allowed to 
first show the causes which inspired Irishmen to adopt measures of physical 
rather than constitutional objection to England's laws. I do not call it rebellion ; 
for, to me, it seems that a rebellion can only exist insomuch as the nation 



218 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

rebelling endeavors to disrupt a policy or form of government which they had 
accepted. 

Ireland never accepted any form of government different from that which 
Irishmen could select. The Union was not acceded to by Irishmen. The 
Irish (?) Parliament of that time was not constituted of Irishmen. As a matter 
of fact, those men who at the time sold Irish nationality for a bribe were 
mostly either West Britons or their descendants ; those of the Irish House of 
Commons who voted against the Union being, almost to a man, Irish, or of 
Irish descent from one or both branches. 

Now, this fact of itself was a cause for dissatisfaction ; but for reasons 
which I shall afterward make clearer, as Mr. O'Neill Daunt says: ". . . . It 
was a very dangerous thing to unite with a country whose debt was sixteen and 
a half times as large as our own debt." And he continues : "The strong prob- 
ability was that, as soon as she got the power, she would put her hands into 
our pockets and take our money toward paying her own debts." How this 
was done can be told in a very few words. 

At the time of the Union the British national debt amounted to four hun- 
dred and fifty million five hundred and four thousand nine hundred and eighty- 
four pounds sterling (^450,504,984), or, in American money, $2,252,524,920. 
The amount of the Irish debt at the same time was ^28,545,134, or $142,725,670. 
The British annual debt-charge was then ,£17,718,851 ($88,594,255), while that 
of Ireland amounted to .£1,244,463 ($6,222,315). So that the relative indebt- 
edness was about 1 to 17 in favor of Ireland. These figures are collected from 
Parliamentary paper No. 35 of 1819, and, therefore, cannot be contradicted. 

By the seventh article of the Union it was agreed : first, that Ireland was 
to be protected forever from any liability to the British debt incurred before 
the Union ; secondly, the separate debts of the two countries being provided 
for by separate charges on each, Ireland was then to pay two-seventeenths 
toward the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom for twenty years. And 
there was a third proviso that it might, and should, under certain conditions, 
which it is unnecessary to give here, be increased to two-fifteenths of the Eng- 
lish debt. 

I shall not enter into the details of how that debt was raised ; it will 
suffice to say that in 1852 the amount of Imperial taxation paid during the 
twenty preceding years was ^86,667,175, or an average of ^4.333-358 per 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 219 

annum — nearly four times the debt-charge of Ireland at the time of the act of 
the Union. And be it remembered that Ireland had just then passed through 
one of the most awful famines of the century. But the worst had not come. 
Great and unjust as was this increased taxation and unconstitutional defiance 
of the seventh article of the Union, it remained for Mr. William Ewart Glad- 
stone to continue to increase the taxes in a degree that was positively scandal- 
ous. In this year (1853) Mr. Gladstone was elected Chancellor of the Exchequer ; 
and although that famous English historian whom I have already quoted (Mr. 
Lecky) says in his second volume, pages 213 and 221, "The people were in 
such a state of poverty that every bad season produced an absolute famine." 
And notwithstanding the then impoverished condition of the people after a 
seven years' famine, Mr. Gladstone at once caused additional taxes to be 
imposed, until the effect of his proposals and laws augmented the already 
exorbitant taxation by ,£45,184,090 in twenty years — making the amount drained 
from Ireland from 1852 to 1872 for Imperial revenue ,£131,851,265, or ,£6,592,563 
per annum. This, it will be observed, was more than five times the debt- 
charge WHICH WAS AGREED UPON BY THE ACT OF THE UNION. 

This Gladstonian tax still continues ; and as Mr. O'Neill Daunt says at 
page 217 of his " History of Ireland ": 

" It is obvious that as income tax and succession tax levied on employers 
must essentially diminish their ability to employ the laboring classes, an impulse 
is given to the exodus (emigration) by the consequent diminution of the 
demand for the people's labor." 

From these facts it will be seen that Mr. Gladstone's action at that time 
had more to say to the causes of Irish dissatisfaction than even the direct con- 
sequences of the so-called Union itself. As I proceed I shall, from other 
sources and from his own works and speeches, prove that his subsequent per- 
spicacity and inconsistency in dealing with Ireland have never failed to develop 
danger to the unity and prosperity of the Irish people. 

Perhaps it will seem to be invidious upon my part to make these observa- 
tions concerning a man whom three-fourths of the Irish race have been taught, 
by certain leaders at home, to look upon as not second to O'Connell or Parnell 
in his desire to benefit the people of Ireland ; but in this sketch I shall write 
only facts, and in justice to my countrymen and to him who has recently died, 
and who gained so much for Ireland — I mean Charles Stewart Parnell — I feel 



220 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

it to be a duty in this compilation to prove that, in the interest of Ireland, it 
was Mr. Parnell's duty to refuse to accept Mr. Gladstone's promises concerning 
Home Rule unless they were given in writing. 

The facts of Mr. Parnell's refusal to do this, and of Mr. Gladstone's shifting 
excuses for not putting his promises in writing, form, to my mind, one of the 
brightest incidents in the life of Parnell ; and they recall the historical vacillation 
and power-courting character of the " Grand Old Man." 

Another potent factor in the development of Irish dissatisfaction, apart 
from misgovernment and the treachery of the English leaders and statesmen, 
which I have already pointed out, was the consistent but unrelenting attacks of 
certain sections of the English press upon the Irish people. Here is a typical 
example from the foremost English paper and organ of the British Government. 
It is now a good many years ago, but the incident is an instructive one, when 
the Times, during the Lord-Lieutenancy of Lord Mulgrave, put into its col- 
umns these words : 

" It has been proved beyond a doubt that Lord Mulgrave has actually 
invited to dinner that rancorous and foul-mouthed ruffian O'Connell." 

We have here in these words the keynote to the misgovernment of Ireland. 

But the action of this paper has been ever hostile to the aspirations of 
every weak people. No better evidence of this is wanting than the following 
extract from the writings of that famous English statesman, Richard Cobden, 
who says of it : 

" By its truculent — I had almost said ruffianly — attack on every movement 
while in the weakness of infancy, it has aroused to increased efforts the energies 
of those it has assailed ; while, at the same time, it has awakened the attention 
of a languid public, and attracted the sympathy of fair and manly minds. It is 
thus that such public measures as the abolition of the corn laws, the repeal of the 
taxes on knowledge, the negotiation of the treaty of commerce with France, tri- 
umphed in spite of these virulent, pernicious, and unscrupulous attacks, until at 
last I am tending to the conviction that there are three conditions only requisite 
for the success of any great project of reform — namely, a good cause, persevering 
advocates, and the hostility of the Times." 

It did seem as though the collapse of the Times-VaxweW case would bear 
out Mr. Cobden's "conviction": for even the most bigoted among the English 
people sought refuge from their erstwhile championship of the Times in regret- 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 221 

ful platitudes for Mr. Macdonald's having been " the victim of such a base forg- 
ery," while, at the same time, they honestly believed that Mr. Parnell and his 
cause had been unjustly dealt with by the governmental championship of these 
same forgeries. But, "a mind that wishes to hate cannot easily be moved to 
love "; and, soon, the acts of the Government, in endeavoring to shirk the respon- 
sibility for their part in the matter, occupied the minds of " all true Englishmen," 
and in their loyalty to their country — or shall I call it the dominant power — Mr. 
Parnell was forgotten, and the crime of the Tory ministry overlooked in their 
zeal for its defense. 

Yes, there is a great deal of wisdom in Mr. Cobden's impeachment of the 
Times — when the infant movement is not an Irish one — but, "great a project of 
reform " as is the one for which Mr. Parnell devoted his life, it was Irish, and 
consequently it did not succeed — then. 

But it would take more room than is at my disposal, to enter into the many 
causes why it was, in my opinion, justifiable for the Irishmen of this period to 
organize against oppression. 

Following Mr. Lecky's idea, I think it well to tell also of the criminal side 
of the history, and, for that purpose, and in order that I shall not be misunder- 
stood in the remarks which I shall afterward make, I take the liberty of quoting 
in full, from Sir Charles Russell's speech, that part of it which he entitles " Pre- 
disposing Causes of Crime," and the " History of Agrarian Crime." These 
extracts cover the ground, as a defense of the motives which led irresponsible but 
earnest and patriotic Irishmen to the commission of crime, in as able a manner as 
has such an exposition ever been written. 



CHAPTER II. 

Sir Charles Russell on the Predisposing Causes of Crime— Lord Dufferin's Statement— 

The Tithe Agitation. 

" Now, my Lords, I have to introduce to your Lordships a statement, his- 
torically considered, not of political movements, but what I may call for clearness 
and for convenience a statement of the predisposing causes to Irish crime, and as 
far as I shall make historical reference, I shall cite only historical authorities that 
are not supposed to be in political accord with those for whom I am speaking. 
It would perhaps be an impertinence if I were to suggest that a great deal of 
what your Lordships will be troubled with by me may be found in Mr. Lecky's 
second volume of the Eighteenth Century, in Mr. Froude's English in Ireland, 
and in Mr. Goldwin Smith's Irish History and Irish Character. But, my 
Lords, the four grounds, the predisposing causes, are these : the restrictions of 
Irish commerce and suppression of Irish manufactures ; the penal code, which, 
while commercial legislation had on the one hand thrown the people upon the 
land as their only means of livelihood, on the other hand came in to prevent the 
bulk of the people acquiring any permanent interest in the land ; the third cause, 
the uncontrolled power of the landlords in the exaction of oppressive rents ; and 
the fourth cause, the general misgovernment of the country, and the consequent 
distrust of the Government which was generated thereby in the Irish mind. 

" My Lords, I am literally within the bounds of truth when I say that all 
historians, English, Irish, and foreign, concur in this opinion, that until a 
period within living memory the story of Irish government was one of the blackest 
pages in the whole history of the world ; that until a period within living memory 
the government of the country was directed, not to the good of the many, but to 
the maintenance of a privileged few, and proceeded, until a period within living 
memory, upon what has been called by one distinguished writer ' the detestable 
principle that to keep Ireland weak was the most convenient way of governing.' 

" My Lords, I can pass over these subjects lightly, but I must touch upon 
each of them. To begin with, Ireland was excluded from the benefit of the 

(222) 



IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 223 

Navigation Laws ; she was shut out not only from colonial trading, she was act- 
ually shut out even from exports to the sister kingdom of Great Britain. Cat- 
tle could not be so exported. The result was the cultivation on a large scale of 
sheep farms ; from that grew rapidly, generally, and to important dimensions, a 
woollen trade in Ireland, and when that had grown to a point at which it seemed 
to threaten English trade, English traders came to the Crown to put it down, 
and it was put down by the imposition of enormous duties. The linen trade was 
not in rivalry with any corresponding English trade, and promises were held out 
— promises which were not fulfilled— that advantage was to be given to that 
trade as compensation for injury to the other. The result was that the only 
possible means, in the existing economic and political condition of things, of 
relieving the enormous pressure of desire for the possession of land was 
closed, for the manufactures and the export trade of Ireland were crippled and 
destroyed. And Mr. Lecky, my Lords, says, in his second volume, at page 
208: 

' The natural course of Irish commerce was utterly checked, and her shipping 
interest, such as it was, was annihilated.' 

And Mr. Froude, in his first volume, at page 395, says: 

' The real motive for the suppression of agricultural improvement was the 
same as that which led to the suppression of manufactures— the detestable opin- 
ion that to govern Ireland conveniently, Ireland must be kept weak. The ad- 
visers of the Crown, with an infatuation which now appears like insanity, deter- 
mined to keep closed the one remaining avenue by which Ireland could have 
recovered a gleam of prosperity.' 

" My Lords, a distinguished man of remarkably calm and judicial mind, I 
mean Lord Dufferin, has in his Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in 
Ireland, at page 129, used this extraordinary language: 

'From Queen Elizabeth's reign until within a few. years all the known and 
authorized commercial confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed 
their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one each of our nascent 
industries was either strangled in its birth or handed over gagged and bound to 
the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain 
of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enter- 
prise have perished through desuetude.' 

" Then he goes through the Acts, and proceeds in the sense which I have 
already explained to your Lordships to show that the effect of this had been to 



224 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

intensify and create the difficulty on the Land Question, and that state of things 
with which your Lordships are already too well familiar. 

' The owners of England's pastures opened the campaign. As early as the 
commencement of the sixteenth century the beeves of Roscommon, Tipperary, 
and Queen's County undersold the produce of the English grass counties in their 
own market. By an Act of the 20th of Elizabeth, Irish cattle were declared a 
" nuisance," and their importation was prohibited. Forbidden to send our beasts 
alive across the Channel, we killed them at home, and began to supply the sister 
country with cured provisions. A second Act of Parliament imposed prohibitory 
duties on salted meats. The hides of the animals still remained, but the same 
influence soon put a stop to the importation of leather. Our cattle trade abol- 
ished, we tried sheep farming. The sheep breeders of England immediately took 
alarm, and Irish wool was declared contraband by a Parliament of Charles II. 
Headed in this direction we tried to work up the raw material at home, but this 
created the greatest outcry of all. Every maker of fustian, flannel, and broad- 
cloth in the country rose up in arms, and by an Act of William III. the woollen 
industry of Ireland was extinguished, and 20,000 manufacturers left the island. 
The easiness of the Irish labor market and the cheapness of provisions still giv- 
ing us an advantage, even though we had to import our materials, we next made 
a dash at the silk business ; but the silk manufacturer proved as pitiless as the 
woolstaplers. The cotton manufacturer, the sugar refiner, the soap and candle 
maker (who especially dreaded the abundance of our kelp), and any other trade 
or interest that thought it worth its while to petition, was received by Parliament 
with the same partial cordiality, until the most searching scrutiny failed to detect 
a single vent through which it was possible for the hated industry of Ireland to 
respire. But, although excluded from the markets of Britain, a hundred harbors 
gave her access to the universal sea. Alas ! a rival commerce on her own ele- 
ment was still less welcome to England, and as early as the reign of Charles II. 
the Levant, the ports of Europe, and the oceans beyond the Cape were forbidden 
to the flag of Ireland. The Colonial trade alone was in any manner open — if 
that could be called an open trade which for a long time precluded all exports 
whatever, and excluded from direct importation to Ireland such important arti- 
cles as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. What has been the consequence of such a 
system, pursued with relentless pertinacity for 250 years? This: that, debarred 
from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon " the 
land," with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded 
rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilized.' 

" So much for the commercial and industrial aspect of the misgovernment 
of Ireland. 



IRELAND, FROM 1843 TO 1875. 225 

"My Lords, the penal code not merely deprived the great bulk of the 
population of the elective franchise, but it excluded them from corporations, 
the magistracy, the bar. They could not become sheriffs, solicitors, even game- 
keepers or constables. They could not buy or inherit land. They could only, 
and that was a relaxation, have a terminable leasehold interest in land, and even 
that could not be within a certain distance of a town, and if the profits derived 
by reason of that terminable lease exceeded a third of the rent they became dis- 
entitled to reap the further profit. Bribes were held out to the Protestant in- 
former against his Catholic kinsman, to the Protestant wife against her Catholic 
husband, to the Protestant child against his Catholic father. The simplest rites 
of the religion of the multitude were proscribed ; and, my Lords, the exclusion 
from partnership in the corporations and the trade guilds had a still further in- 
jurious effect in the same direction, because, inasmuch as the corporations were 
exclusively in the hands of Protestants, inasmuch as the trade guilds were exclu- 
sively in the hands of the Protestants, even the common handicrafts were not 
acquired, could not be acquired to any considerable extent, by the great bulk of 
the Catholics of Ireland. 

" My Lords, that reformation which threw open these corporations to some 
extent was not accomplished until the year 1841 ; and O'Connell, I think I am 
right in saying, was the first Catholic Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin. But, 
my Lords, the so-called reformation of the corporations again worked serious 
mischief, because, in place of preserving the existing corporations, reforming 
and throwing them open to the whole people, and thus giving them at least some 
kind of local self-government, the corporations which existed, numbering, I think, 
altogether — I do not pledge myself to the exact figure — sixty-five, were in great 
part abolished, and I think only either ten or eleven of them left with local 
municipal government at all. My Lords, I will avoid again going into the de- 
tail which is not necessary, but I must trouble your Lordships with one passage 
which summarizes and sums up the evils of this system and points out its lasting 
effects upon future generations. It may be said that this is some years ago, that 
I am speaking of ancient history. It is true that it is some years ago, but, my 
Lords, fifty or one hundred years is, in the life of a nation, less than a day 
or a week in the life of mortal man. If there has been by evil govern- 
ment in the past a crippling of the effect of that progressive principle which 
is in all human society, if there has been a crippling of that natural effort. 



226 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

its evil effects do not pass away immediately the restrictive force has been 
removed. 

" Mr. Froude, in summing up this question in his first volume at page 301, 
says of this system : 

' It was intended to degrade and impoverish, to destroy in its victims the 
spring and buoyancy of enterprise, to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and 
Protestants. These ends it fully attained. It formed the social condition ; it 
regulated the disposition of property ; it exercised a most enduring and perni- 
cious influence upon the character of the people, and some of the worst features 
of the latter may be traced to its influence. It may indeed be possible to find 
in the statute-books both of Protestant and Catholic countries laws correspond- 
ing to most parts of the Irish penal code, and in some respects introducing its 
most atrocious provisions, but it is not the less true that that code taken as a 
whole has a character entirely distinct. It was directed not against the few, but 
against the many. It was not the persecution of a sect, but the degradation of 
a nation. It was the instrument employed by a conquering race supported by a 
neighboring power to crush to the dust the people among whom they were 
planted, and indeed when we remember that the greater part of it was in force 
for nearly a century, that the victims of its cruelties formed at least three-fourths 
of the nation, that this degrading and dividing influence extended to every field 
of social, political, professional, intellectual, and even domestic life, and that it 
was enacted without the provocation of any rebellion, and in defiance of a stat- 
ute which distinctly guaranteed the Irish people from any further persecution on 
account of their religion, it may justly be regarded as one of the blackest pages 
in the history of persecution. In the words of Burke : 

' " It was a complete system, full of cohesion and consistency, well digested 
and well fitted in all its parts — it was a machine of wise and elaborate contriv- 
ance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of 
the people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever pro- 
ceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." "The judgment formed of it," 
says Mr. Froude, " by one of the noblest representatives of English Toryism 
was very similar." " The Irish," said Dr. Johnson, " are in a most unnatural 
state, for we see the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance 
even in the ten persecutions of such severity as that which the Protestants of 
Ireland have exercised against the Catholics in Ireland."' 

" My Lords, I have mentioned as the third predisposing cause to Irish crime 
the uncontrolled landlord power. This is a subject which I must develop at 
greater length later. For the present purpose, I say that that system gave 
practically the power of life and death over the tenants of Ireland ; that the 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 227 

only measure of the protection of the tenant was the sense of justice, but too 
often no protection, of the landlord ; that the greed for land led to the promise 
to pay impossible rents; that those rents were extracted from the people so far 
as they could be extracted, until they were reduced to the condition in which 
Lord Palmerston described the Irish people as being upon the whole the worst 
clad, the worst housed, the worst fed people upon the face of God's earth. My 
Lords, Mr. Froude has given in a sentence at once a description and a condem- 
nation of the Irish land system. He said : ' Russia is spoken of as a political 
despotism, tempered by assassination ; so may the Irish land system be described 
as a social despotism, tempered by assassination.' 

" If any of the persons here accused had made a speech in that sense, clearly 
it would have been one of the most formidable items in the indictment now pre- 
ferred against them ! My Lords, this state of things could not have endured — 
a state of things in which the interests of the many were overlooked for the 
benefit of the few — if there had been in Ireland that force of public opinion 
greater than the law, stronger than the law ; greater than the law, for it makes 
the law in a healthy, freely governed community — stronger than the law, for it 
controls the exercise of the rights which the law gives — rights which could not 
have existed if it had not been that the political condition of Ireland had given 
to the Irish landlords, the men who have gathered into their hands the dignities 
and honors and power of the country — given to them no motive to conciliate 
Irish local opinion, for they had long ceased in any real sense to be Irishmen, 
and had become merely Irish rent-receivers. I am not speaking — I wish it to 
be understood — of all of them, I am speaking of the broad features of their his- 
tory, and I am speaking of them as a class. 

" My Lords, the results of this system were many. It was not merely social 
degradation, it was even also moral degradation, and the direction of that uncon- 
trolled power has been manifested in some remarkable ways. At times when 
the interests, the passing interests of the landlords seemed to induce them to 
regard the living population on the land simply as vermin to be rooted out, it 
led, in times of distress and difficulty, to those wholesale clearances which have 
led in turn to an anomaly, than which there is none more remarkable in the 
economic history of any country — I mean the fact that you could go through 
Ireland to-day, in Roscommon, in Meath, in Mayo, in many other counties, 
where there is fertile land capable of producing great wealth, and yet you may 



228 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

come across the ruins of a home, the traces of a hamlet, but no human habita- 
tion or living being for miles, and a little farther on the sterile bleak hillside, as 
any one can see in Donegal to-day, a crowded, congested, miserable population. 
What does that mean ? It means that those wretched creatures, having nowhere 
to turn and nothing to look to but the attempt to earn an existence from the 
land, and driven from the wealth-sustaining portions of the country where the 
population might be doubled or trebled without disadvantage, are driven to hud- 
dle together on the barren bosom of those hills to earn such a livelihood as might 
scantily support life. 

" My Lords, the fourth and last of the reasons or causes which I suggest as 
predisposing to Irish crime is of course the misgovernment of the country, and 
the consequent mistrust with which that Government was regarded. I have 
already indicated the general grounds for that distrust. I am anxious to avoid 
repeating myself. They are, that the Government was directed, not by a regard 
and fair consideration of the interests of the many, but with the view to the in- 
terests of the few. The result was to show to the Irish people, or the great 
bulk of them, the repressive not the beneficent and protective side of govern- 
ment. The result further was to reverse the natural order of the relation of 
governors to the governed. I take leave to say, I presume in these days no one 
would doubt, that kingships, republics, all manners of government known to the 
world and its political history, have been invented, not for the benefit of kings 
or the leaders of republics, but for the benefit of the people governed ; I say 
further, that in the true and broad and just conception of the relations of gov- 
ernors and governed, the governors are responsible to the people whom they 
govern. I say that in Ireland all that has been forgotten and has been reversed ; 
that in the administration of the law, in the executive processes of the law, in 
the whole spirit of the law itself, it has been in its main and broad lines carried 
out in a way not to remove but to intensify and increase the spirit of aversion 
to law and government which undoubtedly a great portion of the Irish people 
feel. 

" My Lords, Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his Irish History and Irish Charac- 
ter, says, at page 139, that the Irish government during the eighteenth century 
is, in fact, one of the foulest pages in history, and goes on to say that the mass 
of the people were socially and economically in a state the most deplorable 
perhaps which history records as having ever existed in any civilized nation. 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 229 

" I ask any candid-minded man, apart from the heat of politics, apart from 
questions of prejudice, what would he expect to follow from such a state of 
things ? Would he expect a people well affected to the law, which brought 
them little comfort, and brought no sunshine into their lives — a law which to 
them showed mainly its aggressive side ? No ; you would expect what history 
shows has happened, an abiding distrust of the law — I am glad to think not so 
strong now as it once was, for there are mitigating circumstances — but you 
would expect to find a people, so exposed as these people were, when recurrent 
distress came, prone to resort for self-protection to combination, to extra-legal, 
to unconstitutional, aye, and even to criminal means, for their own protection, 
for the most profound observers upon the question of Irish crime and its causes 
(to some of whom I shall have to call your Lordships' attention in a few 
moments) have observed that the crime of Ireland differs from the crime of 
every known country in the world in this, namely, that it is to a large extent 
not the crime of an individual directly, and in hot blood revenging a crime 
committed by an individual, or an injury committed by an individual, but that 
it is a crime which, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis calls it, is of a protective 
kind, and committed, if not by, with the sympathy and in the interest of, a great 
part of the people. 

" From this state of things what would your Lordships expect ? That 
secret societies would spring up ; secret societies at once the effect of misgov- 
ernment, and themselves the cause of crime." 

" I now come to a serious and, as I conceive it to be, an important part of 
this narration ; and that is the actual history of crime in Ireland, in order to 
show your Lordships, as I have already foreshadowed, that when there was no 
Land League which could be blamed, no popular leaders who could be branded 
as accomplices in crime, the same state of things which existed in 1879 existed 
in those former days, producing the same results, intensified, aggravated, recur- 
ring again and again, with again and again recurring distress. It is, of course, 
obviously necessary that I should do this, because if I establish that and show 
in the condition of things in 1879 an ^ subsequently adequate reasons, historically 
judged, for the crime, the milder crime, which then took place, I, of course, 
have gone a long way to relieve those who are here charged ; but it is here an 
imperative duty, in view of the mode in which the case has been conducted by 



230 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

the Attorney-General, who was instructed to assure your Lordships that the 
crimes which occurred in 1879 and in subsequent years were crimes unknown 
in the history of Ireland before the appearance of the Land League. 

" When your Lordships adjourned I was about to endeavor to establish 
by reference to the actual authentic history of crime in Ireland the two propo- 
sitions which I had previously advanced. First, that with recurrent distress 
connected with given definite causes there was recurrent crime ; and secondly, 
that that recurrent crime was of the same kind — directed against the same per- 
sons, aimed at effecting the same results, but much greater in volume and 
intensity than that which your Lordships have on this occasion to inquire into. 

" Something has been said in the course of this case as to one of the most 
reprehensible of the crimes which has been proved before your Lordships, I 
mean the maiming of dumb beasts — a cowardly, detestable crime. I do not 
know how far back it goes, but there is certainly a concurrence of testimony on 
the point, that it took its rise from, and was the criminal expression of, disap- 
proval of the system of clearances of tenants from arable land with a view to 
turn that land into pasture land. These houghing crimes in 171 1 are mentioned 
by Mr. Lecky, amongst others, as having come into existence by reason of the 
wholesale clearances which then took place with the object of turning, as I have 
intimated, arable land into pasture land ; and in 1 761, which is the beginning of 
the formidable rising known under the name of ' Whiteboyism,' it is undoubted 
that the crimes and actions of the Whiteboys arose from cognate causes. In- 
deed, I might state to your Lordships the opinion of no less a person than a 
celebrated Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, namely, Lord Chesterfield, who, in the 
fifth volume of his letters, uses this extraordinary language dealing with the 
question of Whiteboyism. He ascribes the Whiteboy rising (these are his 
words) : 

' To the sentiment in every human breast that asserts man's natural rights 
to liberty and good usage, and which will and ought to rebel when provoked to 
a certain degree.' 

When your Lordships recollect the position which the writer held in Ireland in 
relation to the government of Ireland, I think it will be admitted that it must 
have been a very strong state of circumstances which would have driven him 
to make or justified him in making that remarkable pronouncement. 

"The history of those clearances was followed by the action of a section 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 231 

of the Whiteboys, known by the name of ' Levellers,' because one of their oper- 
ations was the throwing down walls by which the landlords sought to inclose 
for the purpose of letting to fresh tenants or for pasture certain commonable 
lands which the tenants themselves had previously enjoyed ; and there is a very 
curious account of the events of that period given in a book, which I do not 
myself possess, but which I have read, by an intelligent English traveller called 
Bush, in a volume which he has entitled Hibernia Curiosa. Your Lordships 
will find it referred to in Lecky. He gives an account of this matter in the 
fourth volume, beginning at page 319. He says : 

'As we have already seen, the commercial code had artificially limited 
industrial life, and the penal code, long after it had ceased to be operative as a 
system of religious persecution, exercised the most pernicious influence in deep- 
ening class division, rendering the ascendency party practically absolute, driving 
enterprise and capital out of the country, and distorting in many ways its 
economical development. A great population existed in Ireland, and were 
habitually on the verge of famine, and when any economical change took place 
which converted a part of the country from arable land into pasture, and 
restricted the amount of labor, they found themselves absolutely without 
resources. The Whiteboy movement was first directed against the system of 
inclosing commons, which had lately been carried to a great extent. According 
to a contemporary and concurrent statement of Crawford the Protestant, and 
of Curry the Catholic historian of the time, the landlords had even been guilty 
not only of harshness, but of positive breach of contract, by withdrawing from 
the tenants a right of commonage which had been given them as part of their 
bargain when they received their small tenancies, and without which it was 
impossible that they could pay the rents which were demanded.' 

" My Lords, this movement spread over Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, 
and Cork, and afterward to Kilkenny and Queen's County, and there is a record 
— a shocking record — of crime, even (strange as it may seem to your Lordships) 
in more revolting forms and in greater intensity than anything that has been 
suggested or proved in this case. There were the levelling of inclosures, 
wholesale crowds of threatening letters, rescues of property seized for rent, 
grass lands ploughed up, threats against any who paid more than the specified 
amount of charge, no One allowed to bid for a vacant farm unless it was vacant 
for at least five years, the penalty being death or burning, the houghing of cat- 
tle to a large extent ; and you have thus an exact reproduction of the state of 
things complained of in this case, and that, my Lords, at a time when there 



232 IEELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

was no Land League, no constitutional agitation of any shape or kind on foot. 
This being the outcome of the action of this secret body, and of those who 
were in sympathy with that secret body, Sir George Cornevvall Lewis, in per- 
haps the most important and most philosophic inquiry into the causes of Irish 
crime ever written, points to the parallel which existed in 1761, and the subse- 
quent years,, with the later period which he comes to consider, and which brings 
us down to the date of his publication in 1836. 

" The subsequent history of this crime I shall trace to your Lordships in 
the history of the Parliamentary Inquiries and of Royal Commissions. Your 
Lordships probably know the name of Sir George Cornewall Lewis' book. It 
is called Causes of Irish Disturbance, published in 1836. I shall have to 
refer to it later. Your Lordships will see how entirely uninstructed the Attor- 
ney-General was, how grievously misinstructed the Attorney-General was, when 
he put before your Lordships, as I have already intimated, the state of things 
in 1879 an d subsequent years as a new and previously unknown state of things, 
disclosing a new and previously unknown state and class of crime. I shall 
presently call attention to figures to show how vastly in excess of those of the 
present years were the figures of crime at the time with which I am about to 
deal. 

" Take the case of land-grabbing. Amongst the things which was visited 
with the penalty of death and burning was the taking of an evicted farm, or land- 
grabbing. Well, I do not know how far the Attorney-General's historical re- 
searches have gone, but certainly in very early and primitive states of society 
land-grabbing was regarded as a crime by the community, and the reason is ob- 
vious. The reason is particularly obvious in the case of a country like Ireland. 
I am not at this moment doing anything except examining the matter, so to say, 
historically and philosophically. I am not stopping to consider whether justifi- 
cation, or palliation, or anything of that kind, can be suggested. I am examining 
the facts, but the reason is obvious why it should be regarded as a crime against 
the interests of the community, because of course if landlords, the moment a ten- 
ant was evicted from a farm, could immediately get another tenant to take it, I 
need not say it would be a great step toward making evictions easy, and there- 
fore tenants would lose, by the removal of interposed difficulties in the way of 
actual evictions, the protection which they greatly relied upon as lessening the 
evils to which they were exposed. 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 233 

" I do not want to trouble your Lordships with very remote historical prec- 
edents, but there is the very celebrated and early case of land-grabbing of Ahab 
v. Naboth.or Naboth v. Ahab. I confess, my Lords, that I always thought that 
was an exceedingly mild case of land-grabbing, because, according to authentic 
records, Ahab first of all offered Naboth full value for his vineyard, and offered 
him an alternative vineyard as well circumstanced in another place ; and yet so 
strong was the reprehension at that period of the offense of land-grabbing that 
the apparently fair proposals of Ahab did not restrain Elijah the Tishbite from 
animadverting, and animadverting most strongly, upon his conduct. And through 
the whole history of the Irish question, and in every community where the same 
need for self- protection existed, you will find the reprehension and condemnation 
of the community for acts of this kind — acts considered by the community as 
detrimental to the interests of the community. 

" Mr. Lecky says, at page 340 of his fourth volume : 

' The truth is that the real causes of the Whiteboy outbreak are to' be 
found upon the surface ; extreme poverty, extreme ignorance, extreme lawless- 
ness made the people wholly indifferent to politics, but their condition was such 
that the slightest aggravation made it intolerable, and it had become so miserable 
that they were ready to resort to any violence in order to improve it.' 

" And he cites the Knight of Kerry, writing at this very period, the period 
which we are now considering, ' The lower orders,' says the Knight of Kerry, 
' are in a state of distress beyond anything known in the memory of man.' 

" My Lords, that was in the southern counties. In the north, two years 
later, a violent outbreak of the ' Oakboys ' occurred, which spread over and af- 
fected the counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Londonderry, and Fermanagh. And it 
arose from causes comparatively trivial, as it would seem. It arose from this 
cause, that the magistrates, in the exercise of their powers as a grand jury, to 
which some reference has been made in the course of this case, had been using 
those powers to their own direct and immediate advantage, and had caused the 
making of roads for the improvement of their own particular estates and do- 
mains, which were not for the general benefit, and the whole burden and cost of 
which it was sought to throw on the occupying peasants. The people of the 
north rose against it. It was not so formidable a movement, it was not so fero- 
cious a movement. Lord Charlemont, a man as well of distinction as of ability, 
points out the cause of the difference between the two movements in the north and 



234 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 



south. He points out how as regards the north a number of circumstances, 
which I will not here dwell upon at length, had given to the people a much bet- 
ter position, a greater stake in the country than those in the south ; how there 
had been preserved to the tenants in the north in the shape of tenant right, a 
remnant of a much greater interest in the land, which undoubtedly it was the 
object of the great plantation settlement to give them ; how they had been free, 
or a great proportion of the community had been free, from the intolerable perse- 
cutions which had characterized the south ; and in explaining the difference be- 
tween these movements, he uses this expressive language : ' The rebellion of 
slaves is always more bloody than an insurrection of free men.' My Lords, that 
was in 1763, 1764, and 1765. 

" In 1 771 a much more important and a much more formidable movement 
rose in the north, that is the movement of the ' Steelboys,' who were the prede- 
cessors in title of the Orangemen of to-day. The causes again of their action 
are precisely the same ; the chronicles of the period state them in almost identi- 
cal language. Rents excessive, wholesale confiscation of improvements, the put- 
ting up of farms and of houses to the highest bidder, without regard to the rights 
or claims or interests of the ancient tenant, were the immediate causes of the out- 
burst and the formation of that which became a formidable body, and which in 
its later history, I am sorry to say, became sectarian in its character, and not so- 
cial as it originally was. So the effect of this was that there was crime much 
more serious than in the time of the Oakboys. They marched in a body to re- 
lease men, who had been taken up for crimes committed, from the jails of the 
town. The juries which tried these men for various crimes acquitted them 
wholesale. They moved the venues to Dublin, and the Dublin juries did the 
same. The immediate cause was that one great landed nobleman in that neigh- 
borhood, namely, the Marquis of Donegal, had, upon a large scale, endeavored to 
forfeit the interest which the tenants had in their homes. Mr. Lecky says in the 
same volume, at page 347, ' The improvements were confiscated, land was 
turned into pasture, and the whole population of a vast district were driven from 
their homes.' My Lords, the consequences of these particular wholesale clear- 
ances were, unhappily, momentous. They caused a large proportion of the emi- 
gration of the sturdy Presbyterians of the north to America, and when the War 
of Independence came, as the chronicles of that day tell us, amongst the stoutest 
men in opposing the British forces, and in asserting American independence, 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 235 

were these very expatriated Presbyterian farmers of the north and their 
children. From 1780 down to 1806 a number of political events, to which 
I have already referred, were occurring, and as I have, I think, at least once 
pointed out, in times of political movement, social oppression and social griev- 
ances seem for the time to recede into the background, and their existence at all 
events is not made apparent by the presence of remarkable crime. 

" There had occurred in the interval the establishment of Grattan's Parlia- 
ment as it has been styled, the attempted rebellion of 1798, the inchoate rebel- 
lion of Emmet in 1803 ; but from 1806 to 1820 again we have the same thing 
repeated — in the west this time, as well as in the south, and also in the midland 
counties, the Threshers in Connaught, the Whiteboys in the south and in the 
midland counties, and at that period there was a remarkable depression in the 
agricultural interests in Ireland and severe pressure was felti Without dwelling 
too long upon the story, it is true to say that in taking the history of the cen- 
tury, of which we are now speaking, there have been at least five periods during 
that time, times of what would be regarded in this country as destitution of the 
great mass of the people, and certainly two of absolute famine. 

" It is recorded that, owing to the high prices that had prevailed, rents had 
enormously gone up, but in two years, from causes not altogether easy now to 
trace, wheat, at this time one of the considerable products of the country, which 
in 181 2 was worth £6 a quarter, had fallen in 18 14, a period of two years, to ^3 
a quarter. Rents were still maintained at a high standard and at a high press- 
ure. Crime again arose, and was the subject of the charges of judges to juries 
on criminal trials, and many lives were lost on the gallows, and many men were 
lost by expatriation. In that year, or about that time, the year 1814, one of the 
most remarkable judicial pronouncements which probably ever was delivered 
from any bench of justice was delivered by Mr. Baron Fletcher to the grand jury 
in the county of Wexford. Your Lordships will find it reported at full length 
in the Annual Register for the year 18 14. He begins by congratulating Wex- 
ford on its previous condition. He goes on to consider the causes which had 
produced the disturbances, which then prevailed throughout the country, refer- 
ring to the widespread appearance of those disturbances, and pointing to his ex- 
perience on the northwestern circuit, which included amongst others the coun- 
ties of Mayo, Donegal, Londonderry, and Roscommon, and he says: 

' But various deep-rooted and neglected causes, producing similar effects 



236 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

throughout this country, have conspired to create the evils which really and truly 
do exist. First, the extraordinary rise of land occasioned by the great and in- 
creasing demand for the necessaries of life, which, by producing large profits to 
the possessors of farms, excited a proportionate avidity for acquiring or renting 
lands. Hence extravagant rents have been bid for lands, without any great con- 
sideration, and I have seen these two circumstances operating upon each other 
like cause and effect— the cause producing the effect, and the effect by reaction 
producing the cause.' 

" He then goes on in a remarkable passage, which I do not think it is per- 
tinent to read in this connection, in which he speaks of the action of the Orange 
Society as poisoning the fountains of justice, and then he proceeds as to the im- 
mediate and distinct causes of the distrust of law, and the crime which prevailed, 
in a passage than which I have never heard any more remarkable : 

' Gentlemen, that modern pittance which the high rents leave to the poor 
peasantry the large county assessments nearly take from them ; roads are fre- 
quently planned and made, not for the general advantage of the country, but to 
suit the particular views of a neighboring landholder, at the public expense. 
Such abuses shake the very foundation of the law ; they ought to be checked. 
Superadded to these mischiefs are the permanent and occasional absentee land- 
lords, residing in another country, not known to their tenantry but by their 
agents, who extract the uttermost penny of the value of the lands. If a lease 
happen to fall, they set the farm by public auction to the highest bidder. No 
gratitude for past services, no preference of the fair offer, no predilection for the 
ancient tenantry, be they ever so deserving, but, if the highest price be not ac- 
ceded to, the depopulation of an entire tract of country ensues. What, then, is 
the wretched peasant to do ? Chased from the spot where he had first drawn 
his breath, where he had first seen the light of heaven, incapable of procuring 
any other means of existence, vexed with those exactions I have enumerated, and 
harassed by the payment of tithes, can we be surprised that a peasant of unen- 
lightened mind, of uneducated habits, should rush upon the perpetration of crimes, 
followed by the punishment of the rope and the gibbet ? Nothing {as the peas- 
antry imagine) remains for them, thus harassed and thus destitute, but with 
strong hand to deter the stranger from intr tiding upon their farms, and to ex- 
tort from the weakness and terrors of their landlords (from whose gratitude or 
good feelings they have failed to win it) a kind of preference for their ancient 
tenantry.' 

" There is a great deal more of this which is worth reading. He proceeds 
to dwell upon what amounts to a charge on the grand jury of fraud, enlarging 
the charges which I have already mentioned. He points out that ' Ribbonism,' 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 237 

which then began to show its head, was the product of oppression. He then 
proceeds to point out how, not content with the extraction of the utmost far- 
thing of rent, these absentee landlords through their agents claim the political 
power which the tenant, as a voter, had at his command as part of the price 
which he has to pay for his holding, and he says : 

' The tenantry are driven to the hustings, and there, collected like sheep in 
a pen, they must poll for the great undertaker who has purchased them by his 
jobs ; and this is frequently done with little regard to conscience or duty, or real 
value for the alleged freehold.' 

"Then he proceeds to deal at greater length with the results of the fact 
that so large a class of the Irish landholders are absentees. I will not dwell 
upon that passage. Then he proceeds to consider the question : Is there no 
remedy for all this except the remedy of coercive legislation ? I will show your 
Lordships in a moment that during the whole of this time there is a continual 
and dismal record of coercive measure after coercive measure, with hardly a 
year's intermission, for a hundred years. 

" He then proceeds, in a passage which your Lordships will forgive my 
reading, as it will a little lighten the more serious part of what I have to say, to 
point out how difficult it is for the English mind, which he recognized in the 
political relations between the two countries as really the governing mind of the 
matter, to get hold of reliable information, and in a positively humorous passage 
he describes the course of an intelligent English visitor who is coming to learn 
the truth for himself. He says : 

' Does a visitor come to Ireland to compile a book of travels, what is his 
course ? He is handed about from one country gentleman to another, all inter- 
ested in concealing from him the true state of the country ; he passes from squire 
to squire, each rivalling the other in entertaining their guest, all busy in pouring 
falsehoods into his ears touching the disturbed state of the country and the 
vicious habits of the people. Such is the crusade of information upon which 
the English traveller sets forward ; and he returns to his own country with all 
his unfortunate prejudices doubled and confirmed, in a kind of moral despair 
of the welfare of such a wicked race, having made up his mind that nothing 
ought to be done for this lawless and degraded country.' 

" I have said that I will point out what was the nature of the coercive 
measures, as for convenience sake and brevity's sake they are called, in exist- 
ence at this period. In 1 8oo there was in existence the Insurrection Act, the 



238 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and, during a part of the period, martial law. 
The same in 1801. In 1803 there was the Insurrection Act. In 1804 there was 
the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. In 1807 and 1808 the Insurrection Act 
and martial law, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. In 1809 and 1810 
the same. In 1814, 1815, 1816, and 1817 the same. In 1822, 1823, and 1824 
the same. 

" I now pass on, although there are one or two intervening incidents that I 
might dwell upon, and I take up at this point, namely, from the years 1824 to 
1825, the best, the most reliable, the most philosophic inquiry that I have come 
across into the causes of Irish crime — I mean Sir George Cornewall Lewis' 
book. If your Lordships are not familiar with it, and have not got it, I should 
be very glad to be allowed to hand it up. 

" It is the work of a man eminently fitted for the task he undertakes ; a 
scholar, a statesman, a man of eminently fair and judicial mind ; and, my Lords, 
while I make an apology for the length at which I refer to this, I will promise 
that I will not trouble your Lordships with any other authorities that I refer to 
at anything like the same length. The book was published in 1836, and prac- 
tically takes up the whole field of inquiry, beginning with a parliamentary in- 
quiry by a Select Committee in the year 1824, so that it covers altogether a 
period of twelve years. He proceeds to consider the question under these 
heads : 

' The causes of Irish Disturbance ; their character and objects ; the means 
used for accomplishing these objects ; and the effects produced by them.' 

" Now, at page 46 he points out the causes of disturbances in Ireland, and 
says : 

' According to the prevailing system, which has to a greater or less extent 
been acted upon nearly up to the present day, every Irish Catholic was presumed 
to be disaffected to the State, and was treated as an open or concealed rebel ; the 
entire government was carried on by the Protestants, and for their benefit, and 
the Protestants were considered the only link between England and Ireland. 
The English thought it for their interest that Ireland should belong to them, 
and they supported the Irish Protestants in oppressing the Irish Catholics, who, 
it was assumed, without that oppression would throw themselves into the arms 
of France. At the same time that the wide and impassable line was drawn by 
the law between the two religions in Ireland, and the one persuasion was made 
a privileged, the other an inferior, class, the whole of Ireland was treated as a 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 239 

province or colony, whose interests were to be sacrificed to those of the mother 
country.' 

"And then at page 49 he elaborates that point and says : ' In these two 
ways ' — that is to say, the landlords being few in proportion, and to a large ex- 
tent Englishmen, and to a still larger extent not professing the religion of the 
great majority of the Irish people, being Protestants — 

' In these two ways all friendly connection between the landlord and tenant 
of the soil was broken ; either the landlord was at a distance and was represented 
by an oppressive, grasping middleman, or, if on the spot, he was the member of 
a dominant and privileged class, who was as much bound by his official ties as 
he was prompted by the opinion of his order, by the love of power, and by the 
feeling of irresponsibility, to oppress, degrade, and trample on his Catholic 
tenants.' 

" Hence it was impossible that the different classes of society should be 
shaded into one another, that the rich should pass into the poor by that insensi- 
ble gradation which is found in England, or that those amicable relations should 
ever be formed between landlord and tenant which (with temporary and partial 
exceptions) have subsisted for some centuries in the latter country, to its great 
and manifest advantage. The sharp separation of the upper and lower ranks, 
the degradation of the peasantry, their ignorance, their poverty, their reckless- 
ness, and their turbulence were as necessarily the consequence of the system 
pursued in Ireland as the comparative comfort of the laborer, the occupation of 
the land by a respectable tenantry, the general tranquillity of the agricultural 
population, and the gradual passage of the richer into the poorer ranks were the 
consequences of the system pursued in England. And any person who had 
attentively studied the state of society in England and Ireland at the opening of 
the eighteenth century might, without any remarkable gift of political prophecy, 
or without hazarding any rash conjecture, have foretold the respective destinies 
of the agricultural population in either country. 

" My Lords, he then refers to Arthur Young, who toward the end of the 
eighteenth century visited Ireland, and who gives proof of a deeper, darker 
kind still than I care to advert to, of the degradation to which the wives and 
daughters of the Irish tenants were subjected as part of this pernicious system. 
He goes on : 

' The landlord of an Irish estate inhabited by Roman Catholics is a sort of 



240 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

despot, who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no law but that 
of his will.' 

" The following, my Lords, is indeed a philosophical observation worth 
bearing in mind in the progress of this case, and at every part of it : 

' To discover what the liberty of a people is we must live among them, 
and not look for it among the statutes of the realm ; the language of written law 
may be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language but 
that of slavery. There is too much of this contradiction in Ireland ; a long 
series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought land- 
lords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that 
of an almost unlimited submission; speaking a language that is despised, pro- 
fessing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves 
in many cases slaves even in the bosom of a written liberty.' 

" My Lords, let me here observe that, although I do not mean to suggest 
that there have not been in operation causes outside the law which have miti- 
gated the ferocity of this landlord system in Ireland, I do maintain, and I hope 
I shall demonstrate to your Lordships, that until the year 1881, and then as one 
of the products and fruits of the very revolution your Lordships are trying, 
there was no real or effective check imposed by the law upon landlord op- 
pression. 

" He then again proceeds to cite the evidence, which I will not do in great 
detail, taken before a committee as to the causes of crime. My Lords, this was 
a committee which was appointed in 1824, and afterward became a committee 
of both Houses of Parliament, and which practically sat for a number of years, 
and I think finally made its report, I am not quite sure of the date, but I think 
somewhere about 1826 or 1827. He refers to one witness who was one of the 
barristers appointed to administer the Insurrection Act in 1822, and who assigned 
distress as one of the causes of the state of things in Ireland, and he was then 
asked by some member of the committee, ' Have you ever directed your atten- 
tion to the ultimate causes of it ? ' to which the witness answered : ' The ultimate 
causes must be sought much further back in the history of the country.' 

"Then, my Lords, he proceeds to give his reasons bearing on this head, 
which I shall have to trouble you with, though at a later stage, when I come to 
put before you the history of the details of the land legislation relating to Ire- 
land. Then he refers to the evidence of an inspector of police, who is asked : 

'To what do you attribute the long disturbance you have described as pre- 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 241 

vailing among the lower orders in that part of the country (Munster) ?' and he 
answers : ' It is very difficult for me to form an opinion, it arises from so many 
causes. I think a great deal of disturbance has arisen about the rents ; the land 
during the war was set very high in most parts of Ireland, and in peace there 
was a great reduction in the price of produce, a most considerable reduction in 
Ireland, and I think that the landlords were proceeding to distress the tenantry and 
to get those high rents which the produce of the land did not enable them to pay, 
and I think that that caused a number of persons to be turned out of their farms, 
and from that arose a number of outrages from the dispossessed tenants.' 

" Mr. Justice Day, judge of the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, whose 
tenure of the judicial bench appears to have been twenty-one years, is asked a 
question upon the same subject, and in reference to his circuit experience he 
points as an example to one case in the county of Limerick, upon the estate of 
one Lord Courtenay. There was a good deal of oppression and disturbance in 
consequence, into which he goes at some little length. 

" Then another witness says — I will not trouble your Lordships by repeating 
the same thing, but he gives the same causes, ' the prime one always being the 
rent and tithe, and other charges on the land, which it was utterly impossible 
to pay. The people could not pay anything like the demands.' All through I 
find the same keynote. 

" Then there are one or two questions in this connection, although it will come 
a little later in the second head that he mentions. One is asked at page 73 : 

' What was the object of some of these movements? From the history of 
the disturbance it appears that it originated in the conduct of a gentleman on 
the Courtenay estate. He was very severe toward the tenants, and the people 
who were in wealth previous to that were reduced to poverty, and they thought 
proper to retaliate upon him and his family.' 

" I ask the Attorney-General's attention to this : 

'And upon those who took their lands, and this was the origin of it.' 

" When Mr. Leslie Foster, at that time a member of Parliament, is asked 
his opinion, and to what he attributed the frequent recurrence of disturbances, 
he says : 

' I think the proximate cause is the extreme physical misery of the peas- 
antry, coupled with their liability to be called upon for the payment of different 
charges, which it is often practically impossible for them to meet. The imme- 
diate cause of these disturbances I conceive to be the attempt to enforce these 
demands by the various processes of law ; we are also to take into consider- 



242 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

ation that they are living under constitutions for which they have neither much 
affection nor much respect. I have assigned what I conceive to be the prox- 
imate cause of the disturbance. I think the remote one is a radically vicious 
structure of society which prevails in many parts of Ireland, and which has orig- 
inated in the events of Irish history, and which may be in a great measure palli- 
ated, but which it would, I fear, be extremely difficult now wholly to change.' 

"Then a stipendiary magistrate of experience in Queen's County is asked: 

'Are the Committee to understand that you consider the spirit of outrages 
has not been got under?' — ' It has not.' — ' Can you give any hint to the Commit- 
tee as to what you consider likely to accomplish that desirable object ?' — ' I think 
if the laws were amended in one, two, or three instances which I will suggest, 
it would tend to the security of the public peace. There is scarcely an outrage 
committed relative to land but what the people assign a cause for it ; if I may 
use that expression, in some instances the unfortunate people do show a cause 
for it.' 

" Mr. Blackburne was examined, who was Chief Justice of the Queen's 
Bench, as your Lordships may probably recollect, and afterward Lord Chancel- 
lor of Ireland, and in introducing his name at page 78, Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis sums up a portion of the case included in his evidence. He says : 

'All the above witnesses agree in a remarkable manner with regard to the 
causes of the Whiteboy disturbances. All trace them to the miserable condi- 
tion of the peasantry — to their liability to certain charges, the chief of which is 
rent, which they are very often unable to meet — and to their anxiety to retain 
possession of land, which, as Mr. Blackburne truly states, is to them a necessary 
of life, the alternative being starvation. With the dread of this alternative be- 
fore their eyes it is not,' says Sir George Lewis, ' to be wondered that they 
make desperate efforts to avert it — that crime and disturbance should be the 
consequence of actual ejectment is still more natural.' 

" And, by the way, Mr. Blackburne mentions one case on the estate of 
Lord Stradbroke, where, he says : 

' The agent, attended by the sheriff, went upon the land and dispossessed 
a numerous body of occupants ; they prostrated the houses, leaving the people 
to carry away the timber. The number of persons that were thus deprived of 
their houses on that occasion was very large. I am sure that there were about 
forty families, but I cannot tell you the number of individuals. They were 
persons of all ages and sexes, and, in particular, a woman almost in the extrem- 
ity of death.' And then the question follows, 'What do you conceive became 
of them?' and the answer is : ' I should think they have been received from 
charity up and down the country.' 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 243 

" Mr. Barrington is a gentleman who appears to have had a very long official 
life, because I find the same gentleman — I think it is the same gentleman — 
turning up as a witness at another of these perennial commissions to inquire 
into the causes of Irish crime in the year 1852 ; he agrees with the general 
comment upon the lamentable condition which Sir George Lewis points out, 
and which is summed up by him at page 88 : 

' There is so much permanent misery in the southern and western parts of 
Ireland, the mass of the county population are in such a state of distress and 
suffering, they have so little either to hope or to fear, that they are ready at 
almost any time to break out into disturbance, in order, if not to rebel, at least 
to weaken that law which they have always been accustomed to consider as 
their enemy.' 

" And he makes one very curious comment upon a suggestion which has been 
made in the course of this case, when the question was addressed earlier by one of 
my friends, that there is a degree of wretchedness in which the people have been 
so completely prostrated that crime is not found to be rancorous amongst them. 
'Do you think it reasonable to expect perfect tranquillity?' is the question put 
to Colonel Rochfort — ' Do you think it reasonable to expect perfect tranquillity 
in Ireland when there is such a state of wretchedness, and the people so badly 
clad, fed, and housed?' What is the answer? 'My abstract opinion is, the 
lower in the scale of society the populace is, the more sure you are of its obe- 
dience.' Then the question is put : ' In order to keep the country quiet you 
would keep the country wretched?' And the answer is : 'I would not keep it 
so, but I think it would secure the tranquillity of the country.' And then Sir 
George Cornewall Lewis upon that observes : 

'The disturbances in question appear to prevail most where the peasantry 
are bold and robust, and one degree removed above the lowest poverty, and 
where the land is productive and consequently thickly peopled.' 

" My Lords, Sir George Cornewall Lewis was writing before the years of 
the famine — he was writing before the enormous clearances that have taken 
place in the present century — clearances starting principally from the famine 
time, not beginning, but starting in increased volume during the famine 
time, when the landlords, just as distress increased, increased in their urgency 
of legal process, as it will be shown to your Lordships they did in 1879, 1880, 
1881, and 1882. He then cites another authority upon this subject, and a 
very valuable one, an English historian, Wakefield, in his account of Ireland. 



244 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 

This is upon another point. In his first volume Wakefield says, at page 
244: 

' In Ireland landlords never erect buildings on their property, or expend 
anything in repairs ; nor do leases in that country contain so many clauses as in 
England. The office of an agent is thus rendered very easy, for he has nothing 
to do but to receive his employers' rents twice a year, and to set out the turf-bog 
in lots in the spring.' 
That is, of course, upon a point with which I am not now directly dealing. 

" My Lords, I leave the consideration of the causes of Irish agrarian crime, 
which really means the causes of Irish crime. 

" The next point which Sir G. C. Lewis proceeds to consider are the char- 
acter and objects of that crime, and this will, I think, be found to be very 
important. He says : 

' In order to comprehend the peculiar character of the offenses springing 
from the Whiteboy system in Ireland, it is desirable to consider all crimes as 
divided into two classes, not according to the ordinary distinction of crimes 
against the person and crimes against property, but with reference to the motive 
with which they are committed, or the effect which they are intended to pro- 
duce.' (That is at page 94, third chapter.) ' Under one class may be arranged 
those crimes which are intended to intimidate, to determine men's wills, to pro- 
duce a general effect not necessarily even limited to the individual whose person 
or property is the object of the crirne, but at any rate calculated to influence his 
conduct in respect of some future action. Such are threatening notices, mali- 
cious injury to property, beatings, murders, etc., in consequence of some act of the 
party injurious to a particular person, or to classes of persons. The object of 
these is either directly to prevent or to compel the performance of some future 
act, which a specified individual is supposed to be likely to perform or not to 
perform ; as when a man is threatened, either orally or by a written notice, that 
he will be killed if he ejects or admits such a tenant, if he dismisses or does not 
dismiss such a servant, if he prosecutes or gives evidence against such a party ; 
or, secondly, it is to punish a party for having done some act.' 
And then he proceeds to enumerate in the same way cases in which a man is 
threatened because he has rejected or admitted such a tenant, because he has 
not dismissed such a servant, because he has prosecuted or given evidence 
against such a party. Then he points out the motive of the crimes that he is 
considering. 

' In this character' (he says) 'they look not merely to particular, but also 
to general results ; not merely to the present, but also to the future; not merely 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 245 

to themselves, but also to those with whom they are leagued and with whom 
they have an identity of interests. The criminal who acts with these views is, 
as it were, an exectitioner who carries into effect the verdict of an uncertain 
and non-apparent tribunal ; and it usually happens that others profit -more by 
his offense than he himself who committed it. To the other class may be 
referred those crimes whose effect is limited to that which is actually done by 
the offender.' 

" I will not trouble your Lordships by pursuing that passage ; but I do ask 
attention to the fact how ill this historical record fits in with the statement of 
the case which the Attorney-General, upon what I must designate most imper- 
fect instructions, put before your Lordships. We have here the very same class 
of things carried out in the very same way, apparently with the very same class 
of object. Then he proceeds : 

' Now the characteristic difference between the crimes of Ireland and of 
England, France, and indeed of almost every civilized country in the world, is, 
that in a large part of Ireland the former class appears to preponderate consider- 
ably beyond the latter.' 

That is to say, the class in which the offense is committed, not to revenge a 
wrong done upon the individual committing it by an individual who has com- 
mitted it, but in the sense which Sir George Cornewall Lewis subsequently ex- 
plained, namely, the protective sense. Then he continues : 

' The preponderance of the exemplary or preventive crimes ' (which is an- 
other term he applies) ' may be particularly seen in certain districts of Ireland. 
Thus in Munster, in the year 1833, illegal notices, administering unlawful oaths, 
assaults connected with combination, attacks on houses, burnings, maiming of 
cattle, malicious injury to property, and appearing in arms, nearly all of which 
were of this description, comprehended 627 out of a total of 973 crimes, and even 
of the others, homicides, etc., many were doubtless committed with the same 

motive It is to the state of things which we exhibited in the last 

chapter, to the wretched condition of the mass of the Irish peasantry, their in- 
ability to obtain employment for hire, and their consequent dependence on land, 
to the system of combination and self-defense thus engendered, in short, to the 
prevalence of the Whiteboy spirit, that this peculiar character of Irish crimes is 
to be attributed. It has already been explained how the Irish peasant, constantly 
living in extreme poverty, is liable, by the pressure of certain charges, or by 
ejectment from his holding, to be driven to utter destitution, to a state in which 
himself and family can only rely on a most precarious charity to save them from 
exposure to the elements, from nakedness, and from starvation. It is natural 



246 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 

that the most improvident persons should seek to struggle against such fearful 
consequences as these, that they should try to use some means of quieting appre- 
hensions which (even if never realized) would themselves be sufficient to embit- 
ter the life of the most thoughtless ; and it is to afford this security that the 
Whiteboy combinations are formed.' 

" Then he proceeds to use this language, more than once quoted, but cer- 
tainly remarkable : 

' The Whiteboy Association may be considered as a vast trades union for 
the protection of the Irish peasantry ; the object being, not to regulate the rate 
of wages or the hours of work, bzit to keep the actual occitpant in possession of 
his land, and in general to regulate the relation of landlord and tenant for 

the benefit of the latter That the main object of the Whiteboy 

disturbances is to keep the actual tenant in undisturbed possession of his holding, 
and to cause it to be transferred at his death to his family, by preventing and 
punishing ejectment and the taking of land over another's head ' [which is land- 
grabbing], ' is proved by a whole body of testimony. A secondary, but not 
unfrequent object is to regulate the rate of wages by preventing the employment 
of strangers, or by requiring higher payment from the farmers. The VVhiteboys 
of late years have rarely interfered with the collection of tithe, which was at one 
time their principal object of attack.' 

" Now, my Lords, he gives at this point a classification of the crimes then 
prevalent. It reads like a record of the crimes your Lordships have been inquir- 
ing into — crimes which the Attorney-General was instructed to say were previ- 
ously unknown : . 

' To force the party to quit land in his occupation. To avenge the taking 
of land. To force the party not to eject tenants, or to punish him for ejecting 
them. To force the party not to take land. To force the party not to let land 
to certain persons. To force the party to let land to certain persons. To force 
the party to let land at a certain rate. To prevent the party from recovering 
possession of a house. To force the party not to pay more than half a year s 
rent. To force the party to quit his service. To force the party not to employ 
or to punish him for employing certain persons. To punish for discharging 
from his employment. To prevent persons working under a certain rate of 
wages. To prevent or avenge the collection of rent, tithes, or county cess, or 
the taking of legal measures to enforce payment of them. To rescue parties 
arrested. To prevent the party giving information to the military. To prevent 
the execution of a warrant ; ' 

and so on, and so on. It is a classification of many offenses which have been 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 247 

proved to have existed in this case. There is ah answer at page 109 by the 
Rev. Nicholas O'Connor, one of the witnesses examined, which is not without 
significance. It is asked : 

'What are the principal objects they have in view? — To keep themselves 
upon their lands. I have often heard their conversations when they say, " What 
good did the emancipation do us ? Are we better clothed or fed, or our chil- 
dren better clothed and fed ? Are we not as naked as we were, and eating dry 
potatoes when we can get them ? Let us notice the farmers to give us better 
food and better wages, and not give so much to the landlord and more to the 
workman. We must not let them be turning the poor people off the ground." 
Then some of them that went to England and saw the way the English labor- 
ers are fed and clothed, came back and told them: " If you saw the way that 
the English laborers lived, you would never live as you do "; and some persons 
from another part of the country told them that they managed things a great 
deal better ; that the way " was to swear to be true to each other, and join to 
keep the people upon their ground, and not let the landlords be turning them 
off"; then it is proposed that they should meet at some shebeen house, of which 
there are too many, unfortunately, in the country, or some licensed house of low 
description where they get drunk and become demoralized, and thus they are 
seduced into the Whiteboy system.' 

" My Lords, I recollect a conversation, publicly quoted some years ago, 
which made a deep impression upon me, for I knew the conversation had taken 
place as it was reported. A peasant in the south of Ireland in the year 1881, 
complaining of his hard lot and of the exactions and raisings of rent which had 
been put upon him by his landlord, whose name I will not mention, was bidden 
to be of good hope, that there had been promise of land reform and protection 
for the Irish tenant. The man's answer was very significant. He said : 

' I believe Government mean well, but,' he said, ' the people have done 
more for themselves than the Government will do for them. I am told that 
down Tipperary way' (this man was a Kerry man) 'the landlords were at one 
time the worst in Ireland, and some of them got badly hurt, God help them, 
and now they tell me that the landlords of Tipperary are as good as any of the 
landlords in the rest of Ireland.' 

" My Lords, that is a sad spirit to have got hold of the people, looking to 
themselves and to such means, not to the Government of the country and the 
Legislature of the land, for the redress of grievances. There are many other 
things in this interesting book that I would have desired to call attention to, but 



248 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

I have so much to say that I cannot dwell on it as long as I should otherwise 
desire to do. My attention is called to page in. Very much the same thing 
has been said by Mr. Bennett, speaking of other counties, Kildare and Queen's 
County. 

' The character of crime appeared to me to result from a conspiracy to 
prevent any person from taking land, or from possessing land from which the 
previous tenant had been ejected for rent, and threatening strangers of every 
description from coming into the country ; also particularly directed against wit- 
nesses who either have come forward, or it was apprehended would come for- 
ward to give evidence upon criminal prosecutions, or with respect to land ; that 
was the impression that was made upon my mind from the evidence I received.' 

" My Lords, to the classification of crime I have already referred. I should 
like now to call your Lordships' attention to the quantity of crime referred to. 
Now, you will see, sad and regrettable as is the state of crime which you have 
been inquiring into for a period of ten years — many of those years, years of dire 
distress, as your Lordships will have demonstrated to you — how slight that crime 
is compared with the period I am now upon. The particular table I have is the 
year 1833. ' Riots in Ulster, 340.' It appears that figure ought to be corrected, 
because a note says that in one of the districts of that province included under 
the head of riots are assaults. That, of course, is unimportant for what I am 
upon. 

' In Leinster, 94 ; in Munster, 46 ; in Connaught, 59 : total for that year of 
riots, 539. Rescue and resistance to legal process: Ulster, 127; Leinster, 41 ; 
Munster, 48; Connaught, 226; total, 442, for the year 1833. Illegal meetings: 
Ulster, 83; Leinster, 128; Munster, 6; Connaught, 64: total, 281.' 

" Then there are ' notices,' which I do not trouble your Lordships with. 

'Administering unlawful oaths,' total, 167. 'Appearing in arms,' total, 145. 
' Robbery or demand of arms, 393. Assaults connected with combination, 926. 
Attacks on houses, 1,325. Burnings, 489. Maiming or destroying cattle, 271. 
Malicious injury to property, 890. Homicides : Ulster, 45 ; Leinster, 56 ; 
Munster, 80; Connaught, 57: total, 237,' in the one year 1833! 'Firing at 
persons' (this was at the beginning of the tithe war), total, 237. ' Cutting and 
maiming, 31.' 

Then ' burglary ' I need not trouble your Lordships with, nor the others, making 
as the grand total of all crimes for that year the enormous number of 9,943 
offenses. 

" Now, I think I am justified in saying that, so far, I have shown, in a con- 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 249 

dition of things in many respects far below the intensity and pressure upon the 
great body of the population which existed in 1879, when the people had no 
open organization, a state of crime much worse than anything that can be sug- 
gested as having existed in the worst years since 1878 ; and I hope to make it 
apparent to your Lordships that, although it may be suggested (that I will here- 
after deal with) that the Land League exercised an oppression and a tyranny of 
its own, yet I say it is demonstrable that, just in proportion as it was effective 
in these results, which will be alleged to have exercised a certain petty tyranny 
or pressure, it had the effect of lessening so far from increasing serious crime. 
And it seems to me that the consideration of the case makes it apparent that 
that must be so, because if you have got, focussed, the expression of the opinion 
of a largely preponderating class in the community in condemnation of a par- 
ticular line of conduct supposed to be inimical to the general interests of the 
community, whether it takes the form of boycotting, or what you please, it is 
perfectly obvious that in proportion as that force is effective, it must tend not to 
increase but to diminish weighty crime. You may say that is itself crime. I 
will deal with that hereafter. You may say that boycotting is crime and a re- 
lentless form of tyranny. I shall examine that presently, but I say it is demon- 
strable that, just in proportion as there is a focussing of the public opinion in 
the localities and throughout the country, it must have the result of lessening 
serious crime. 

"The tithe war began in 1830, and it to some extent overlaps the period 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis refers to. It includes the year 1833, the statistics 
of which he gave us. It continued with (what shall I call it ?) great force until 
the year 1835, when one of the few statesmen charged with the conduct of pub- 
lic affairs in Ireland who ever showed a comprehension of his position and of 
the state of things in Ireland — I mean Thomas Drummond — succeeded to the 
Irish Office as Under-Secretary, and took a bold and resolute step — a step 
difficult perhaps to justify upon narrow technical legal grounds, because the 
tithe farmers and the tithe owners had the right to their pound of flesh, and they 
had a right to invoke in aid the civil authority ; they had a right to invoke the 
executive forces of the Crown in assertion of those rights. Thomas Drummond 
refused them that help ; and from 1835 until finally the Tithe Act was passed 
,in 1839, there was comparative peace in Ireland in the matter. Boycotting ex- 
isted ; all the evils which are here referred to, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis' 



250 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 

book shows, existed in a marked degree. Men were ordered out of particular 
employments of obnoxious persons who would not yield to the suggestions or 
the behests of the anti-tithe organizers, and in this connection I will quote from 
a book which is the only work of any historian that I shall have occasion to re- 
fer to who may be said to be in sympathy with the defendants here accused ; 
but he quotes his authorities, and I refer to his book because I find them con- 
veniently collected there — I mean the book of my learned and able friend, Mr. 
Barry O'Brien, entitled Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland. I am reading 
from the first volume. He gives an instance of the mode in which the attempts 
at seizures for tithes were resisted, and at page 397 he gives this instance of the 
way in which those public sales were treated. Notices were put up to this effect : 

' (1) It is requested that no auctioneer will lend himself to the sale of cows 
distrained for tithes. (2) It is requested that no person will purchase cows 
distrained for tithes. (3) It is resolved, that the citizens will have no inter- 
course or dealings with any person who aids in the sale of the cows as auctioneer 
or purchaser.' 

" The result was there were no sales. He then goes on to describe a scene 
which has a humorous aspect. The anti-tithe organizers of Dublin caused notices 
to be served on five leading persons in their community, calling upon them not 
to pay tithes. These five persons were Lord Cloncurry, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. 
Bourne, Mr. Bagot, and Mr. Graydon. The notices were disregarded, and 
orders were then issued directing their servants and laborers to leave the 
employment of those gentlemen. These orders were instantly obeyed. A 
meeting was next held in the neighborhood where these gentlemen lived, and 
they were all summoned to attend the meeting and explain their conduct in 
disobeying the injunction. Graydon, Armstrong, Bourne, and Bagot, I believe, 
all, after an interval, came in and said they would not pay tithe any more. The 
question was asked by the chairman, Mr. Neill, where was Lord Cloncurry ? 
An answer came that his lordship was not there, but that he had sent a number 
of laborers in his employ to represent him. The chairman said : 'What have 
you got to say ? Why did Lord Cloncurry pay the tithe ? ' — ' He did not pay 
it,' said the spokesman, ' and he was always a friend to the people, and always 
against the tithe, and he has not paid a shilling in tithe to Dean Langrishe 
since the Dean came to this parish.' So far the case seemed very good, and 
Lord Cloncurry was going to be dismissed as having accorded with the popular 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 251 

wish in the matter, when one of the laborers, more indiscreet than the others, 
shouted out : ' And what's more, the divil a copper of rent the Dane pays me 
Lord.' So that immediately it became apparent that Lord Cloncurry, on the 
one hand, was not paying his tithe to Dean Langrishe, but, on the other hand, 
that Dean Langrishe was getting it in meat if not in malt, because he was not 
called to pay any rent to Lord Cloncurry. The result was that steps were 
taken that these servants should not go back to work for Lord Cloncurry 
except he undertook not to pay the tithe. Well, my Lords, I could multiply 
these instances. These are not cases where, as described in the indictment of 
the Times, self-interested, self-seeking politicians constructed the machinery for 
this anti-tithe war. It sprang up naturally, because there was a strong sense of 
the injustice and oppression which the system was working upon the people ; 
and then, as naturally takes place in every such movement, there came to the 
front men who held the same views, men who were fit to do work which the 
needs of the country at the time required to be done to meet a social wrong 
and a social oppression. 

"There is a Lords' Committee of 1839 which tells the same story that I 
have been already telling your Lordships. I do not propose to trouble your 
Lordships with a repetition of that. I merely give the reference to it in pass- 
ing, and I pass over other similar accounts at other periods. 

" Now we come to still later days. A parliamentary committee of the 
House of Commons was appointed in 1852 ; and here the venue is changed 
from the south and west of Ireland to the north of Ireland, the three counties 
whose disturbed state was then inquired into being the counties of Armagh, 
Monaghan, and Louth, two of them Ulster counties. The committee was to 
inquire into the outrages in Ireland, and into the state of those parts of the 
counties of Armagh, Monaghan, and Louth which were referred to in Her 
Majesty's speech, into the immediate cause of crime and outrage in those dis- 
tricts, and into the efficiency of the laws and their administration for the sup- 
pression of such crime and outrage. I will not trouble you at the same length 
as I have done, and will give your Lordships a summary of the evidence. It is 
noticeable that what I may call the official class of witnesses, with hardly an 
exception — district inspectors, if they existed then, police magistrates, landlords, 
and so forth — all said the Land Question had nothing to do with the state of 
things then existing ; all that was wanted to secure peace in Ireland was a 



252 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

strengthening of the criminal law ; and they added that the effect of any con- 
cession in the shape of further yielding (as they called it) to the demands of the 
Irish tenants would be but to encourage them in their lawlessness, and to 
encourage their agitators. The agitators at that time were the men whose 
names I have already given to you in an earlier portion of my address. The 
agitators in the south were, prominently, Frederick Lucas, Sir Charles Duffy, 
John B. Dillon (the father of the accused John Dillon in this case), and, in the 
north, Dr. M'Knight, editor of the Banner of Ulster, and the Rev. John 
Rogers, Moderator then or thereafter, as I have already said, of the General 
Assembly of Ulster. 

" But, notwithstanding this official evidence, the committee made two 
suggestions. Some witnesses had insisted upon the distrust which existed in 
the administration of the law, and others had insisted upon the state of the land 
law, as the cause of the disturbance being inquired into. The committee make 
these two suggestions — (i) That there shall be but' one panel of jurors to try 
issues civil and criminal at these assizes, in addition to any special jury which 
may be lawfully summoned, and that measures shall be adopted to secure strict 
impartiality in the construction of the jury panel ; (2) That the attention of the 
Legislature be directed to an early consideration of the laws which regulate the 
relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland with a view to their consolidation 
and amendment, and especially to consider the practicability of such legislation 
as might provide adequate security to tenants for permanent improvements, and 
otherwise place the relation on a more satisfactory basis. 

" Sir Charles Duffy, Mr. Lucas, Mr. Isaac Butt, a host of men, had again 
and again, as I shall have to point out, tried to do this thing and failed. Atten- 
tion had not been sufficiently awakened and arrested in the mind of the English 
people and in the mind of the Imperial Legislature. They had not realized the 
significance and importance of it. The Devon Commission of 1845, seven years 
before, had recommended the same thing, in the same direction, on the same 
lines ; and yet nothing was done till a quarter of a century after that recommenda- 
tion of the Devon Commission, namely, in 1870, and then but little. The rec- 
ommendation being in 1845, nothing was done till 1870, and then an Act was 
passed which, to use the language of Mr. Leonard, agent for Lord Kenmare 
— language with which I agree — produced little or no effect. ., 

"The point I am now upon, of course, is still the history of crime. The 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 253 

committee took the evidence of magistrates, police inspectors, and Catholic 
clergymen, and they reported on the 4th June, 1852. The general state of things 
proved was the occurrence of numerous murders and other outrages, difficulty in 
detecting offenders and securing their punishment, strained relations between 
landlords and tenants, a widespread secret Ribbon society, and an open and avow- 
edly constitutional organization called the Tenant League, the heads of which I 
have mentioned. Evidence was given that murders of landlords and land agents 
and magistrates had taken place, one notably attracted a great deal of attention 
at the time, the murder of one Mauleverer, which was the occasion (I may men- 
tion it, as I have animadverted strongly upon the Times in general) of an article 
in the Times, stronger in its language than any speech or combination of speeches 
that have been read in the course of this case ; bailiffs beaten for serving tenants 
with notices calling upon them to attend and pay their rents ; herds and care- 
takers of evicted farms murdered ; outrages upon occupiers of evicted farms; the 
murder of an agent, Powell, who had been clearing lands to enlarge the demesne 
of the owner, one Quinn ; a baker threatened for collecting his debts ; an agent 
murdered for collecting rents ; threats to the bailiff who served the notices to 
pay the rents and to come into the office ; and threats also to tenants who were 
going to pay rent and who had paid without reduction — the very same class of 
thing as is in question here ; proof that it was customary for gentlemen to travel 
armed ; threatening notices with coffins and the rest ; outrages to prevent bidding 
for farms ; outrages upon the occupiers. A number of these it was proved, as in 
this case, although connected with land, probably arose from private quarrels and 
differences. 

" Then, as regards the incidents and effects of these crimes, the great major- 
ity of the witnesses admitted that the Land Question was at the root of them ; 
that the principal object was to get reductions of rents and to prevent evictions ; 
that a large quantity of land was waste, because none dared to take it, and the 
landlords were afraid to stock it with cattle lest the cattle should be injured ; 
general indisposition to take land from which tenants had been evicted ; general 
sympathy with outrage, leading to the withholding of evidence ; evidence of get- 
ting up subscriptions for the defense of prisoners in agrarian cases ; and regretta- 
ble but true — I mean as connecting cause with effect — reductions of rents, stop- 
pings of contemplated evictions after and in consequence of outrage or the dread 
or apprehension of outrage ; and lastly, the agents in the commission of these 



254 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

offenses, the active workers, shown to be laboring men and the younger sons of 
small farmers — the very thing which you have again in this case — men who are 
described as moral in other relations of life; crime in Ireland spoken of as the 
' crime of the community.' An illustrious man, whose tongue is now silent for- 
ever, Mr. John Bright, was a member of this committee, and I only wish your 
Lordships had the time and the opportunity to go through this evidence and read 
his cross-examination of witnesses, and see, reading between the lines, the views 
that were in full pressure and force upon his mind as to the difficulties and the 
causes which lie at the bottom of this disturbance. 

" Now, the evidence also showed that the rents had previously been punctu- 
ally paid until the bad seasons of the potato crop. That is exactly what I shall 
prove, and, what already has been proved to be the case here, that those rents 
were paid partly out of the produce of the land, partly by harvest earnings in 
England, for even from the county of Armagh persons have gone for the pur- 
pose of working in the English harvests ; partly from remittances from relatives 
in service in England, and from relatives in America ; that in the period of distress 
small subscriptions and little help came from the landlords to alleviate the distress ; 
that the greatest number of the outrages were in the baronies and parts of the 
counties where there were most ejectments and most threats of ejectment ; and 
according to some of the witnesses that the outrages were due to the high letting 
of the land and to the evictions, and to people having no other resource but the 
land. 

" I am now reading (rather than read the whole thing at great length) a 
summary of the evidence, and opposite the summary the number of the question 
is in each case given, and I shall be glad to hand up both the book and the sum- 
mary, if your Lordships desire to look at it. 

" It was further shown that the machinery of outrage was organized by a 
secret society of Ribbonmen ; that these societies were working by identical 
methods in the north and in the south ; and that they were of long standing and 
under various names. Then it was shown that the Ribbonmen belonged to a 
particular religious section just as the Steelboys belonged to one particular relig- 
ious section, though, so far as their methods and the objects of their attacks were 
concerned, Catholics equally with Protestants were attacked. They made self- 
constituted tribunals to settle the affairs of the country ; forced contributions ; 
lots were drawn as to the commission of outrage ; persons not allowed to take 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 255 

land from which others had been evicted. And, in answer to a suggestion — a 
very faint and unimportant suggestion— which was made in the course of the in- 
quiry as to the part which the Tenant League had in the matter, I should like to 
read two or three questions at greater length. The only persons who made that 
suggestion were what I have called the police or official witnesses. I think this 
particular witness, a clergyman, was being examined by Mr. John Bright, who 
apparently had a proof of his evidence. 

' You have stated that the origin of Ribbonism was the existence of Orange 
Societies.' ' You have alluded to the case of Mr. Powell ' (and so on. I need 
not trouble your Lordships about that). ' You are perhaps aware that the Ten- 
ant League Association has been formed recently ? (A). Yes. (Q.) Would 
you ascribe the increase of crime in your district, or in neighboring districts, to 
the existence of the Tenant League? (A.) I would not (Q.) Would you say 
there is any connection between the Tenant League Association and the perpe- 
trators of crime in the districts with which you are acquainted ? (A.) I think 
the Tenant League has a directly opposite effect, inasmuch as hopes are held out 
that the condition of the tenant may be improved ; and I think that very expec- 
tation tends very much to promote peace, and that any hope which is at all 
afforded that at any prospective time protection will come in the shape of a quiet 
and peaceful arrangement of the differences between landlord and tenant tends 

very much to the preservation of peace (Q.) Do you believe that the 

Tenant League are taking a peaceable aud constitutional mode of accomplishing 
that object ? (A.) I do ; and their motto is, in point of fact, that every one who 
does commit a crime in the prosecution of that object is an enemy to the Tenant 
League. (Mr. Bright) I presume what you mean in regard to the Tenant 
League is, that they endeavor to make the people understand the question, and 
they make efforts to get legislation in their favor? (A.) Yes. (Q.) Are you 
to be understood as justifying and defending and identifying yourself with every 
statement which is made by the Tenant League ? (A.) No.' 

" My Lords, a good deal more evidence is given to that effect, but there is 
the evidence of one witness which struck me as particularly important, the 
official witness whose name I have already read — namely, Sir Matthew Barring- 
ton, who appears to have been a Crown official for a great many years of his 
life. He was clerk of the Crown, I think, in Munster. I just interpose one 
other question. The Rev. Daniel Brown, Presbyterian clergyman, of Newtown- 
Hamilton, in the county of Armagh, is examined. He is asked : 

' Have agrarian outrages increased within the last few years? (A.) They 



956 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

appear to me to have increased since the failure of the potato crop, when the 
small farmers found it difficult to make up the rents they had been accustomed 
to pay, and landlords and agents commenced evicting and serving notices to 
quit. (Q.) Can you assign any reason for these outrages ? (A.) I think the 
want of a constitutional remedy for the social wrongs connected with the rela- 
tion of landlord and tenant has led to many of these offenses and crimes. I 
think if you gave a constitutional remedy for these social wrongs you would cut 
up crime by the root, and establish order on the basis of justice.' 

"Again, the same Presbyterian clergyman, on page 583, says this: 

' (Q.) Do you think that the outrages which have occurred in those dis- 
tricts are the result of Ribbon conspiracy? (A.) I cannot say what may have 
been the agency employed — I am not cognizant of that ; but I feel satisfied in 
my own judgment and conscience that they arose from the unfortunate state of 
the relations between landlord and tenant. I do not impute them to religion or 
to politics ; and I say further, that when the State has not provided a constitu- 
tional remedy for social wrongs, the principles of our nature look for a remedy, 
and bad men, taking advantage of that, very often commit crime. Coercion 
without remedial measures will only aggravate the disorders of the community. 
Justice is the only firm basis of public order. The oppression of rack-rents and 
of extra police taxation, punishing the innocent for the guilty, exasperates and 
disturbs the community, and drives multitudes away to a land where labor finds 
its reward.' 

" My Lords, I merely call attention to the evidence of Sir Matthew Bar- 
rington, but before I leave this Committee I should like to call your Lordships' 
attention to the figures of crime. It is at page 590 of the Appendix to the 
Report. First, there is the return of the number of cases in which parties have 
been made amenable to justice for the years 1849 an d 1850. Then there is a 
comparative return of outrages and arrests reported as distinguished. from those 
for which parties had been made amenable. I will only trouble your Lordships 
with the more important offenses of homicide and firing at the person. 

" In 1849 parties made amenable : Homicides, 163 ; firing at persons, 44; 
total number of cases of all kinds at sessions, general sessions, assizes, magis- 
trates, 199,009. That is for the year 1849. In 1850, homicides, 165 ; firing at 
persons, 22. Your Lordships of course understand that this is not conversant 
only with agrarian crime; it deals with all crime, the total being 214,181 for the 
whole of Ireland. That is everything. I am citing it merely for my present 
purpose under the head of homicide. Those are the cases for which parties have 




Forcing Gladstone's Land Bill upon the Irish People- 



IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 257 

been made amenable. Now, the cases of homicide reported in 1849, are 2 °3 J 
in 1850, 139. I remind your Lordships that over the whole period of ten years, 
which has rightly or wrongly been covered in this inquiry (I mean by the evi- 
dence given in this inquiry), going down to as late as the year 1888, I think, if 
not the year 1889, the entire number of murders of which full and direct evi- 
dence has been offered to your Lordships, connected with agrarian causes, 
amounts, I believe, to about 26. 

•' My Lords, when the Court adjourned yesterday I was pursuing the his- 
tory of agrarian crime in Ireland, and I was following in order the account, 
with which I troubled your Lordships at some length, of what I described as 
the historical predisposing causes to crime in times of distress, and particularly 
to agrarian crime in Ireland. I have nearly arrived at the end of that branch of 
the case. I have referred your Lordships to the remarkable parallelism between 
the state of things shown to exist in 1852 in the three counties of Armagh, 
Monaghan, and Louth, two of those counties being Ulster counties. 

" Next in order of date came the Land Act of 1870, but I do not propose 
to give your Lordships a history of that Act at this moment. I desire to give 
it under the next head, as part of the historical treatment by legislative action 
of the Land Question itself. But in 1870 or 1871 there was another outbreak 
of crime in Ireland, which prevailed in a most marked degree in West Meath, 
which was one of many counties in Ireland which had been subjected to clear- 
ances upon an enormous scale. Whole villages and hamlets and houses by the 
hundred had disappeared under the operations of those clearances ; and in 1870 
and 1871 undoubtedly crime had risen to a very high point in West Meath. 
There was one of the usual committees of inquiry, and at that time, and in rela- 
tion to that measure, a speech was made by a statesman, I mean Lord Harting- 
ton, in 1871, describing the state of things there. After describing the crimes 
which existed, he proceeds thus : 

' All these acts of violence are, we have reason to believe, the work of the 
Ribbon Society. The reports which we receive show that such a state of terror- 
ism prevails that the society has only to issue an edict to secure obedience. Nor 
has it even to issue its edict ; its laws are so well known and infringement of 
them is followed so regularly by murderous outrage that few indeed can treat 
them with defiance. Ribbon law and not the law of the land appears to be that 
which is obeyed. It exercises such power that no landlord dares to exercise the 
commonest rights of property. No farmer or other occupier dare exercise his 



258 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

own judgment or discretion as to whom he shall employ. In fact, so far does 
the influence of the society extend, that a man scarcely dares to enter into 
open competition in fairs and markets with any one known to belong to the 
society.' 

" My Lords, this was a time when there existed no open organization in 
relation to the Land Question, at whose door could be laid the blame of these 
events." 



CHAPTER III. 

The Young Ireland Movement — Events between 1848 and 1865— James Stephens — The 
Fenian " Conspiracy"— John O'Mahony — An Explanation of why the Irish People 
were justified in these uprisings— the kllclooney wood incident— corydon the 
Informer. 

Although a great deal of the matter quoted from the speech of Sir 
Charles Russell does not deal with the connecting period between O'Connell 
and Parnell, it is not the less interesting, and will materially assist the reader 
in carefully studying the sketch of Mr. Parnell's life and achievements. 

The facts which I have indicated tell of the crimes which prevailed in Ire- 
land, and of the predisposing causes of these crimes. The judgment which I 
have attached to that criminal record — in the language of the late Attorney- 
General for England — will absolve me from the charge of partiality, or that I 
did not advance upon the lines laid down by Mr. Lecky as constituting the 
most perfect method of recording the history of a people. 

I have shown also the causes which led the people of Ireland to, from time 
to time, band themselves together, and by physical force endeavor to throw off 
England's yoke. I shall now briefly outline these uprisings, or the work and 
constitution of these movements. 

The Young Ireland movement in 1848, in its later development, was 
unquestionably an unconstitutional movement — a physical force movement, in 
the English mind principally associated with that aspect of the case ; but that 
is not the true import of the story of the Young Ireland movement of 1848. 
That physical force part of it was but an insignificant and unimportant part. 
That movement was the precursor, in its earlier stage, of the later and stronger 
and more successful movement with which the name of Mr. Parnell is associated 
as its leader, carried on by him under happier conditions, with an awakened 
public intelligence, with a broader franchise, and with, therefore, a broader plat- 
form of action. To that Young Ireland movement, in connection with which 
are such honored names as O'Brien and Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel — 

(259) 



2(50 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

with all his faults as to methods and as to means — Charles Gavan Duffy, John 
Martin, John B. Dillon, and many others whom I could name : to that party 
the merit is to be attributed that they sowed the seeds then amongst the Irish 
people of self-reliance and unsectarianism, for sectarianism had too often blotted 
and corrupted Irish movements. Insisting, as they did, upon the right of self- 
government, they worked might and main for the removal of what they con- 
sidered social grievances — for land reform, church disestablishment, and for 
education. The reward at this time was prosecution, exile, broken hearts, for 
some of them. Of those who survive, one may point to Sir Charles Gavan 
Duffy, who, despairing of any success in his own land, went abroad to Australia, 
and, in the free air of a self-governing colony, rises to the highest position that 
that colony could afford him as Speaker, as Prime Minister, and comes back in 
his advanced years here, the man four times prosecuted in Ireland, to receive 
titles and dignities at the hands of the Sovereign. 

There are other names not so directly associated with the political move- 
ment in Ireland at that time, but honorably associated with the creation of a 
body of literature little known in this country, but a body of literature which, 
considering the circumstances under which it came into existence, and the 
comparatively brief period over which it extended, is creditable to the genius of 
the nation and to the efforts of the men who produced it. And notable amongst 
those names are the names of Thomas Davis, of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the 
president of the Land Court in Ireland, of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, of John 
Kells Ingram, of Trinity College, Dublin, and a number of others whose names 
I will not stop to recite. 

After this movement of 1848 there came a relapse, and I would ask you to 
note — for it has significance and importance in the consideration of this ques- 
tion — how the waves of constitutional and unconstitutional agitation succeeded 
one another, and how, after the country made an effort in a constitutional 
direction and failed, it seemed to fall back into the slough of despond, and then 
secret societies and illegal combinations burrowed the country. 

In 1852 the country pulled itself together again. They had in Ireland a 
strangely restricted franchise. They have to this day, compared with England 
and Scotland, a strangely restricted municipal franchise. I am now only refer- 
ring to the Parliamentary franchise. So remarkable is the contrast that, given 
two towns of equal population, the one in Ireland and the other in England, 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 261 

the English town would have twice, sometimes three times as many voters as 
the town of corresponding population in Ireland. There was in these days also 
no right, except the right of open voting. These were the times when, as 
record after record shows, the voters were driven to the poll as sheep into a 
pen by the landlord, the agent, and the bailiff. But still, in face of great diffi- 
culty and by great sacrifice, a party was returned to the House of Commons at 
Westminster, pledged to independent opposition, pledged to land reform, 
pledged to take no office under, but to hold aloof from, every Government 
that did not make that a cabinet question. 

The prime figures of that movement were again Sir Charles Gavan Duffy 
and a noble-hearted Englishman of great head and of great magnanimity of 
character, Frederick Lucas, who went to Ireland not as a politician but as ed- 
itor of a Catholic newspaper, whose great and magnanimous soul and sympa- 
thies were touched by the oppression which he saw around him, and who threw 
himself earnestly into the effort to try and relieve the people among whom 
he had chosen to live, from some portion at least of the evils that weighed 
upon them. 

They started a tenant league in the North and the South. The principal rep- 
resentatives of the South were Lucas and Duffy ; in the North, Dr. M'Knight, 
a Presbyterian journalist, and the Rev. John Rogers, then or afterward Moder- 
ator of the General Assembly in the North. The story of that party of inde- 
pendent opposition is a shameful story, and I pass it over — a story of violated 
oaths, of broken pledges, and of another relapse of the Irish people into the 
slough of despond. They had with effort and sacrifice sought to create and 
maintain this party — a great majority of the party were honest, but they had 
failed in obtaining redress ; they had tried, implored the British Parliament to 
deal with this land question and had failed ; and then years passed over during 
which the Parliamentary representation of Ireland was of a character that I will 
not describe further than by saying that it was self-seeking and discreditable. 

Meanwhile events had been happening abroad — across the Atlantic — which 
have an important bearing on one part of this case. The stream of emigration 
had been going on to America. A new generation had sprung up there. The 
American war of North and South had taken place. In the armies, of the 
North principally, many Irishmen had served, and amongst those men arose, 
and from those men mainly came, the impulse of this Fenian movement which 



262 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

began to raise its head very soon after the cessation of the American war, and 
which became undoubtedly an important factor in the secret movement in rela- 
tion to Ireland. I have pointed out the constitutional efforts made in 1852, 
and for years subsequently. Now we have the unconstitutional, the illegal, the 
secret movement. I wish to be quite plain in my treatment of this, as of every 
other Irish movement. I think that a politician of our day, and a member of 
the present Government, was most unfairly treated when he expressed his 
views, as far back as 1868, about the true character of the Fenian movement. 
I mean Mr. Henry Mathews. He, with great courage, at a time when there 
was a great tide of popular prejudice against, and as he thought misrepresen- 
tation of, the Fenians, said some words, at least in palliation, if not in justifi- 
cation of their conduct and position. It is true to say of the Fenian organ- 
ization as it then existed that it was not a party of assassination, but that it was 
a revolutionary party that looked to physical force for the redress of Irish 
grievances. What some sections of it, or some organizations springing from it, 
may in later days have developed into, when its responsible heads have been 
drawn away into the constitutional agitation, I know not, and will not for the 
moment inquire. But it was not true historically, it was a calumny, to allege 
that the Fenian body was anything but a physical force movement ; and, it is 
right further to say, that so far as agrarian crime was concerned, the lowest 
point that agrarian crime ever reached in Ireland was the time when the Fenian 
movement was at its height. The truth is that in every movement which took 
place in Ireland, constitutional or unconstitutional, anything which afforded 
the hope of redress can be shown historically to have always led to a diminution 
and not an increase of crime. 

And right here it will not be inapt to quote John Rutherford, whose 
effrontery I have already noticed. Of the '48 movement he says : 

" Whatever else the rebellion of '48 contained, there was no lurking treach- 
ery therein. 

" We are no partisans of the men of '48 ; their political opinions are not 
ours ; and we can see no necessity for Irish rebellion then or since. But we 
must be fair even to insurgents ; and it is but right to say this much of the 
leaders of '48, that they were very frank and daring in their proceedings, that 
there was something which, if not chivalrous, was yet exceedingly like chivalry 
in their bearing-. Nor were they so very unwise, except in points to be noticed 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 263 

immediately. There was revolution in full swing all over Europe ; there was 
something like rebellion impending in England ; there were dark clouds hanging 
over more than one important dependency, and there was the hope, we might 
say the certainty, of substantial aid from republics already established. 

" We need not remark that republicans, more than men of any other polit- 
ical creed, are prone to making converts. That has been shown over and over 
again. The Italian republics of past centuries did much toward their own ruin, 
by their endless attempts to revolutionize neighboring states not governed as 
themselves. The French revolutionists of the eighteenth century exasperated 
all monarchical Europe by similar conduct. And the French republicans of 
1848 could hardly have refrained from aiding the Irish republicans of the same 
date, had the latter made anything like a respectable appearance in arms. As 
to North American republicans, it was stated in the House of Commons by one 
who was no friend to republicanism, and the statement remained uncontradicted, 
that 1,000,000 dollars had been transmitted by the Irish in America in aid of 
the projected rebellion. 

" The very audacity of the Irish chiefs of '48 was another great point in 
their favor. The British Government had never before been called upon to 
deal with anything like it ; it was utterly unprepared for the novel state of affairs ; 
new laws had to be made to meet the exigency. All this took time ; the gov- 
ernment could only act according to law ; it was a great advantage to the pro- 
moters of rebellion. But the latter made a most unfortunate selection in their 
chief. A gentleman in most essentials of the highest personal character, tracing 
his lineage back directly to the hero of Clontarf, Smith O'Brien had faults that 
far more than counterbalanced all these recommendations. He was childishly 
fond of pomp and show ; he was vain and weak in the extreme ; in many re- 
spects he was wrong-headed ; apart from his physique, he had not one com- 
manding quality. Such a leader would have ruined any plot. 

"Then his lieutenants — bold, energetic, and able, as most of them were — 
committed a grievous error. The outbreak ought to have taken place in the 
spring ; they postponed it till the autumn. It must be allowed that they had 
reasons, apparently of great weight, for taking this course. The farmers and the 
peasantry, in whom consisted the strength of the intended insurrection, were 
averse to a struggle while the crops were still on the ground ; it would have 
been ruinous to many among them. But the harvest gathered, they were ready 



264 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

to rush into the fight with all the reckless dash of their race. The consideration 
thus forced upon the chiefs of '48 was an important one. 

" But similar considerations are perpetually forcing themselves upon states- 
men and generals. Every crisis of war and peace is full of them ; but it is not 
every leader who is qualified to estimate them at their just import, when weighed 
against other considerations. And of the few who possess the requisite accuracy 
and coolness of judgment, not every one has the firmness to decide according to 
his judgment, and to act instantaneously and energetically upon his decision. 

" Here time was a more important consideration than the harvest, and time 
was disregarded. The struggle was deferred till the close of the autumn. The 
government, forewarned and alarmed, had time for ample preparation. Troops 
were poured into Ireland and concentrated in masses, at all the strategic points ; 
not a single weak detachment was exposed to the risk of surprise. War steam- 
ers lined the coasts, and enfiladed the principal thoroughfares of the leading sea- 
ports with their broadsides. Laws suited to the emergency were passed in haste. 
The more dangerous districts of Ireland were proclaimed under despotic law. 
Every measure, in short, was adopted that policy could dictate. 

" The outbreak took place three months at least too late. As might have 
been expected, it proved an utter failure. The probabilities against success were 
indeed so generally obvious that few, except the reckless and those who con- 
sidered themselves bound in honor to appear in arms, would have anything to 
do with it. Most, if not all, the chiefs felt that the attempt would be vain, but 
they owed it to their sense of honor to make it, and many of them were already 
so deeply committed that the course, however desperate, could render their 
position worse, while there was a chance that actual rebellion might result in 
safety. The attempt was made— how, everybody knows ; and here, for the first 
time, do we meet the noted leader of the Fenians, James Stephens." 

And I make no apology for also giving Mr. Rutherford's short account of 
Stephens' early career. To give the gentleman his due merit, he was painstak- 
ing in his research, no matter how prejudiced were his feelings on the subject. 
He says : 

"James Stephens was born at Kilkenny in 1824. He has no claim to 
ancient lineage, nor even to pure Celtic blood. He belongs to a mixed race, in 
which the Saxon predominates. In those days, at least, his relatives occupied 
but a low station, being most of them artisans, peasants, or very small farmers. 




TITE RETURN OF THE IRISH EXIL] 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 265 

His father, occupying about the best position of any, was an auctioneer's clerk, 
who possessed and cultivated a small holding of his own. We have reason to 
believe that he was educated a Protestant, and we know that many of his blood 
and name were Orangemen. The farming portion of his father's pursuits had 
much influence in moulding the prejudices of the son, since it rendered him 
familiar, from his cradle, with the leading Irish grievances — those connected 
with the land. 

" With Saxon solidity, energy, and reach of purpose, James Stephens in- 
herited the quickness and ardor of the Celt. From his earliest days he was 
noted for his thirst for knowledge and his devotion to its acquisition. As it 
happened, his father was able to foster and direct his tastes, and the boy was 
saved from that which is so often the curse of genius — self-education, with its 
disjointed studies — things which so often hamper ability and baffle its aspira- 
tions. Method and a practical aim were given to his reading, with due effect. 
Displaying a marked preference for mathematics, pure and applied, it was de- 
termined to train him as an engineer. To qualify him for the pursuit, his scho- 
lastic education was prolonged to his twentieth year. At that age he obtained 
an appointment on the Limerick & Waterford Railway, then in the course of 
construction. So far, his studies and his avocations occupied all his time, and 
kept him aloof from politics. 

" The completion of the railway throwing him out of employment, he be- 
took him to the Irish capital. It was precisely the period when the ' Young 
Ireland ' party was developing its fervor, and its brilliant advocates soon made 
a convert of the young engineer. He was not one to play the part of a mere 
automatic follower. He attended the meetings, spoke occasionally, and threw 
off a newspaper article now and then ; but neither as a speaker or a writer did 
he display that sort of power which is most effectual in swaying the Irish mind. 
He was vigorous and argumentative, but not declamatory; mere declamation 
was not in harmony with his temperament. In after years he attained to some- 
thing like it by study and practice; but a comparison of his speeches with those 
of such men as John Mitchel and Magee will show the difference between them. 

" When work was to be done, however, James Stephens had no superior. 
In preparing rebellion in '48, he was one of the most active agents. He did his 
work very quietly and cautiously, so cautiously as to attract little or no atten- 
tion from the authorities — but most ably and effectually. In establishing the 



266 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

' clubs,' no one was more successful. While thus employed, he traversed most 
of the south of Ireland. 

" During one of his journeys he fell in love with a young woman who dwelt 
in the heart of Tipperary. The wooing was a short one. Feverish times heat 
other passions besides that of patriotism, and perhaps more warmly in Irish- 
women than in Irishmen. Stephens' occupation, and the perils in which it in- 
volved him, gave him a sort of heroism in the eyes of a female sympathizer. 
Besides he was very prepossessing — with the graceful Celtic figure and the smooth, 
bright Saxon face — and most persuasive. The passion was mutual. An en- 
gagement was formed at once, and the marriage was to follow the impending 
struggle, which neither doubted would be successful." 

But I cannot delay too long upon the career of James Stephens. He lives 
to-day ; and from his double exile — exiled from Ireland, and afterward, through 
British machinations, exiled from France — he came to assist at the funeral serv- 
ices of Ireland's greatest leader — Charles Stewart Parnell. 

However, even such a brief sketch of the '48 movement and of some of the 
men who took part in it — notably of those who afterward became prominently 
connected with the Fenian movement — would be incomplete if I were not to 
tell something of the sufferings of those men. 

It was on June 29th, at Ballingarry, that the men of '48 made their initial 
and only attempt at open insurrection. It was a miserable affair — a mere sum- 
mons to a Captain Trant and his party of 45 policemen to surrender a strong 
stone house in which they had entrenched themselves. They refused to sur- 
render, and were shortly relieved by 60 additional police. O'Brien, illy sup- 
ported by the few hungry followers who attended him, desisted from the attempt, 
and (togetherwith Thomas Francis Meagher, McManus, and Patrick O'Donahue) 
was soon afterward arrested at Thurles and committed to prison. 

These four men were tried before a special commission, held at Clonmel, 
and all received the sentence of death, which was afterward commuted into life 
banishment. 

Of the sufferings of the few remaining leaders I shall give a short narrative 
in the words of one of them— Michael John Doheny, a barrister, who, with Ste- 
phens, spent many weeks — nearly three months — wandering among the moun- 
tains, to avoid capture and watching for an opportunity of escape. This ex- 
tract, which is from the " Felon's Track," published by Mr. Doheny in New 



IBELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 267 

York in 1849, gi ves a clear vision of the indomitable pluck and patriotism, as 
well as the all-absorbing love of country of James Stephens and of the author 
himself. He says : 

" It was Sunday, a fortnight after Stephens joined me, the cold and wet of 
the preceding evening had given way to calm and sunshine ; and we made rapid 
way along the slopes of the Comeraghs, thence to the Knockmeildown moun- 
tains, having one main object in view, to place the greatest possible distance be- 
tween where we were to rest that night and where we last slept. The greatest 
difficulty we experienced was in passing deep ravines. The steep ascent and 
descent were usually wooded and covered with furze and briars. Far below 
gurgled a rapid and swollen mountain stream, which we crossed without undress- 
ing, and always experienced the greatest relief from the cold running water. But 
toiling our upward way through trees and thorny shrubs was excessively fatiguing." 

A second passage recounts an experience of another kind. The circum- 
stance, it may be explained, occurred toward evening, after many hours of travel. 
" We hoped to find refreshments in a small public-house on the road leading from 
Clogheen to Lismore. I entered the house rather hurriedly, and the first object 
that met my view was a policeman. I turned quickly round and disappeared. 
The rapidity of my movement attracted his attention, and calling to his comrades 
and some countrymen who were in the house, commenced a pursuit. At first 
they appeared little concerned, but walked quickly. We accordingly quickened 
our pace when it became a regular chase, which continued four miles, until we dis- 
appeared in the blue mists of the Mitchelstown mountains, as night was falling 
around us. When we saw our pursuers returning we ventured to descend, and 
entered a cabin, where we found a few cold, half-formed new potatoes and some 
sour milk, which we ravenously devoured. I do not ever remember enjoying a 
dinner as I did this. My comrade, who had suffered much from illness, was un- 
able to eat with the same relish. It was night when we had finished our repast, 
and we set off in search of some place where to lay our heads. We met several 
refusals, and succeeded with great difficulty at last in a poor cabin." 

Next day it rained incessantly, but they pursued their way over the Kil- 
worth mountains, being anxious to get as far as possible from their pursuers. In 
the dusk of the evening they crossed the river Funcheon, by means of a tree, 
which, half-uprooted by the flood, hung over the stream. Climbing the tree, they 
dropped from the branches into the shallow water near the opposite bank. 



268 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

They often found themselves at a loss respecting the position of places and 
the paths to follow. " On such occasions," writes Mr. Doheny, " we would call in 
at the nearest national school to make the necessary observations on the map. 
Sometimes we examined the children, sometimes the master; generally one of 
us was so employed while the other was noting down carelessly on the map the 
points of observation to direct our path. When we found we were traced and 
discovered, our first care was to consider how our enemies would be likely to 
judge respecting our future movements. If we had reason to suspect that we 
were recognized on a mountain, we sought shelter in or near a town ; and after 
we appeared in a public place for a day or an hour, we kept the mountain-side 
for a week following." 

Yet it was not altogether for the sake of safety that they kept so cease- 
lessly afoot, and, by preference, among the mountains. " We had another and, it 
must be confessed, a more powerful motive. In either alternative which our fate 
presented (capture or escape), there was no hope of beholding these scenes again, 
and we could not omit this last opportunity of minutely examining and enjoying 
what was grandest and loveliest in our native land. We resolved, therefore, to 
leave no spot un visited, whatever toil it cost or risk it exposed us to." 

They kept their purpose, traversing all the more magnificent scenes of 
the South, from Tipperary to the extremity of Kerry. They climbed to the sum- 
mit of Cairne-Tuthal, and they skirted the lakes of Killarney, for days crossing 
morass and stream by primitive means, often in great peril of capture, — often ex- 
periencing disheartening rebuffs where they had reason to anticipate something 
very different. On one occasion, when hardly pressed, sharply hunted, and ex- 
hausted for lack of food, they resolved to seek the aid of a priest who dwelt in a 
lonely mountain gorge some miles distant. 

"We descended the eastern slope of the hill, and after proceeding some 
distance through corn-fields and meadows, we reached the mansion of the clergy- 
man, wayworn and half-famished. He whom we sought had won a character for 
truth, manliness, and courage, and we calculated upon his unrestrained sympa- 
thies, if not generous hospitality. He was absent from home when we reached 
his door, and we waited his arrival for more than an hour, and, through delicacy 
for his position, we remained concealed in a grove some distance from his house. 
He at length appeared, and I proceeded alone to meet him and make known my 
name. He started involuntarily, and retreated a few steps from me. After re- 



IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 269 

peating my name for a few seconds, he said, ' Surely you are not so unmanly as 
to compromise me?' I replied that so sensible was I of the danger of commit- 
ting him, that I refused to enter his house, though we all, and particularly my 
female companion, [at this period the fugitives were accompanied by the sister- 
in-law of Doheny, who was exposing herself to much danger in order to secure 
their escape,] sadly needed rest and shelter. After some time he began to 
pace up and down in front of his door, repeating at every turn that it was indis- 
creet and dishonorable to compromise him. Among the many trials to which 
fate had doomed me through hours of gloom, of peril, and disaster, and even 
during reveries of still darker chances, which fear or fancy often evoked, I never 
felt a pang so keen as that which these unfeeling words sent through my heart." 

He bitterly reproached the priest as " one of those who had urged them 
to their fate," giving them "every assurance that, in any crisis, they would be 
at their side" — merely to abandon them when the crisis came. The priest 
replied by directing them how to recross the mountains by another route, and 
closed his door in their faces. " His table and sideboard bespoke abundance 
and frequent merry-makings ; but we turned toward the mountain, hungry and 
exhausted, without being asked to taste food or drink. It was already evening. 
Dense masses of fog had gathered on the hill, and lurid streaks, spreading far 
out on the sea, portended a night of storm and gloom. However, we had no 
resource save to regain the house where we had slept two nights before, and 
which we supposed might be distant about seven miles." 

All, however, were not like the priest— notably "a man of giant frame 
and noble features !" squatting among the mountains near Kenmare — a myste- 
rious personage with the look and habits of an outlaw, who treated them hospit- 
ably to the wild delicacies of the wood and stream, who gave them his son to 
guide them when they departed, and who astonished them by mentioning 
Doheny's name in his emphatic directions to the youth — the owner of the name 
being unable to guess how his host had learned it. 

During all these wanderings, Stephens is described as manifesting the 
most astonishing coolness, never complaining, though his track was often 
marked with blood, but always doing his best to cheer Doheny with song and 
jest. .Once, indeed, he broke down, but the cause was sufficient. Through all 
this trying time the pair contrived to maintain communication with their friends. 
Their safety was mainly due to their command of money, and with this essential 



270 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 



they were supplied from time to time, as well as with letters, through sure 
channels. It was toward the close of their vagabond life, and when they were 
expecting hourly to hear that the means of flight to another land had been 
secured for them. They awaited the next messenger and the letters he was to 
bring with much anxiety. He came at last, reaching them after many twists 
and turns, and delivered his charge into eager hands. Doheny's letters were 
satisfactory ; not so those of Stephens. " My companion's," writes the narrator 
of this trying period of their lives, " was a sad, sad blow. Where he had most 
trusted on earth (the lady of his love) his application had been coldly received, 
and his most unlimited confidence utterly disappointed. Money was forwarded 
to him from other sources, but the spirit that braved every disaster up to that 
broke under disappointed affection and blighted love. For some time he refused 
to take another step, but, yielding himself up to the agony of his shattered 
feelings, he ardently desired to abandon a struggle involving nothing but the 
life he no longer desired to save. From my knowledge of the country and 
other resources, he regarded my chances of escape as favorable, and his own pres- 
ence as an impediment and a check. He was, therefore, anxious to relieve me 
of a burden, at the same time that he would free himself from a weight still 
more intolerable. In that he was mistaken. His imperturbable equanimity 
and ever-daring hope had sustained me in moments of perplexity and alarm, 
when no other resource could have availed. During the whole time which we 
spent, as it were, in the shadow of the gibbet, his courage never faltered, and 
his temper was never once ruffled." 

The visit of a lady — an enthusiastic friend of Doheny and his cause — 
one who sought and obtained the interview through many difficulties, and at 
some personal risk — and her judicious words of comfort and expostulation, 
roused Stephens from his despairing mood, and he resumed "the felon's track," 
in Doheny's company, with all his former courage and equanimity, but not with 
his former gayety. This episode of the love of the far-reaching conspirator 
and its end is exceedingly suggestive. What was its effect on him ? Trials 
like this temper the soul. 

A few days afterward they managed to leave the country. Stephens 
sailed from Cork as the servant of a lady in the secret. It was proposed at 
first that he should assume the dress of a lady's maid, for personation of whom 
his slender figure, his small hands and feet, and his delicate features fitted him ; 



IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 271 

but he refused to put it on under any circumstances. He saw the last of Ire- 
land, for the time, on the 24th of September. Doheny followed, sailing from 
the same port a week later, in the dress of a drover. Both had to traverse 
England ere they could reach France. This passage was easily effected by 
Stephens. Doheny met with much more difficulty. The fugitives rejoined 
each other a little later in Paris. Thither they were speedily followed by one 
who was destined to be a leading coadjutor in the Fenian movement — John 
O'Mahony. The last, after the arrest of O'Brien, managed to raise a consider- 
able band, with which he continued to move among his native mountains for 
several weeks. Finding that the insurrection was not likely to spread, while an 
overwhelming force was being concentrated against him, he dispersed his fol- 
lowers and went into exile. 

Doheny made' but a short stay in the French capital, departing at an early 
date for the United States. There he resumed his joint professions of barrister 
and journalist ; there his " Felon's Track," which I have quoted, appeared the 
following year ; and there also he began immediately to lay the foundation of 
American Fenianism. As for Stephens and O'Mahony, they made France their 
principal home for several years. 

The spirit of the Irish nation had received no severe shock in 1848. 
There had been no great rising ; no actual struggle, and consequently no defeat. 

It was in 1853 that James Stephens and John O'Mahony left France, the 
former to organize the people of Ireland, and Mr. O'Mahony to introduce the 
doctrines of the " new conspiracy," as Rutherford calls it, among our people in 
America. In Ireland, Stephens began his work, assisted by Thomas Clark 
Luby, whose able life of O'Connell precedes this sketch. 

But, before Stephens would take any decided steps toward remodelling the 
movement, he determined to sound the precise state of the Irish mind on the 
question. And for this purpose he set out with Mr. Luby on a tour of obser- 
vation. This journey lasted ten months, and during its course the two patriots 
walked " not less than 3,500 miles." The inspection was gratifying to them, 
and forthwith they decided to begin the task of establishing the organization in 
deadly earnest. 

Counting from 1853 to the end of 1865, the Fenian organization was thir- 
teen years in growth. The United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders de- 
veloped their plots much more quickly ; but their schemes fell to pieces at the 



272 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

very opening attempts, whereas, although the Fenian movement could not boast 
much more of direct success, its ramifications were more deeply rooted. It had 
enlisted in its ranks more than a million of the Irish in America, and nearly half 
of that number at home, and its effect, both upon the people of Ireland and the 
British Government, was more far-reaching than any previous attempt to secure 
Irish autonomy. 

Even to-day — after all the deaths and imprisonments and exiling of those 
who were leaders of that movement — its teachings and doctrines are upheld, 
among the more patriotic Irishmen, in every part of the globe. And in this 
there is a justice — a patriotic justice — which is unexampled. Because, were it 
not for the " Fenian " uprising or " conspiracy," the later constitutional methods 
of Butt and Parnell would have had no weight on the political balance of the 
Imperial Parliament. The men of '66 and '67, and the gigantic proportions of 
the conspiracy, proved to England and to the world that, in the government of 
Ireland, there was something very wrong. It was simply the outcome of mis- 
government, and Lord Bacon, in his paper " On Seditions," admirably exposes 
the matter in this way : " To give moderate liberty, for griefs and discontent- 
ments to evaporate, is a safe way ; for he that turneth the humors back and 
maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers and pernicious im- 
posthumations." 

And in this is the root of Irish discontent. By false promises and empty 
and misleading measures of reform (?), the wounds of Ireland have been made 
to "bleed inwards"; the energies of the community were misdirected, and the 
elements of political progress destroyed — or, rather, converted into the outpour- 
ing of the inward spirit of the people — repelling the perverted channel of its 
opinion. It operated as does nature — it rebelled against the immoral practices 
which were being used as irritants to the inward health of the public feeling. 

I do not believe a more plastic people ever existed than the Irish Every 
act which was passed by the English Parliament, that seemed to tend toward 
justice, or the amelioration of Ireland's wrongs, created a reaction in the public 
sentiment toward England ; and, in their gratitude, the enormity of their wrongs 
was often forgotten. Every act that seemed to them to increase their position 
of bondage, begat increased hate for the Government which had stolen their 
liberty. 

This was the people whose patriotism the Fenian leaders elected to mould 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 273 

into a solid phalanx of unrelenting rebels — rebels against injustice. That they 
succeeded even so well is a lasting monument to their patriotism and persever- 
ance. Concerning this very subject, or rather in direct analogy with it, Mr. 
Lecky says : 

" In no other history can we investigate more fully the evil consequences 
which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality, which, whether 
it be wise or foolish, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human 
passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of Irish discontent." 

Quite true. The disregard of the national feelings and aspirations of the 
Irish people by the Government of England is undoubtedly the primal germ of 
their discontent. And it is a magnificent spectacle, in the history of nations, to 
find that national spirit unbroken after centuries of oppression and wrong-doing 
unexampled. 

The admirable methods of conspiracy used by the leaders of the Fenian 
movement may be learned from Mr. Rutherford's exposition of it (vol. i., pages 
6 1 and 62). He says : 

" The grand object of Stephens, let it be borne in mind, was to form an 
army fitted to cope successfully with the army of England. The members of 
the I. R. B. were all to be men capable of taking the field. Nor were they 
to seek an encounter until fully prepared for it. The task before the Chief 
Organizer was not only to enlist followers, but to discipline them up to the 
modern military standard, to arm them with the best weapons, to provide them 
with all necessary munitions of war, and to place them under the command of 
competent officers. 

" His conspiracy bore no resemblance, in its plan, to the usual run of his- 
toric conspiracies. The latter, for the most part, depend on effecting a surprise 
— on paralyzing the enemy for the moment by striking an unexpected stroke — 
as the seizure of the capital, or the slaughter of the leading ministers ; and then, 
while the surprise holds the masses terrified and motionless, to install themselves 
firmly in power. Stephens had sense enough to see that the success of such 
conspiracies is only possible under peculiar circumstances — as in the limited re- 
publics of ancient Greece, and in the free cities and great communes of mediaeval 
Italy and Flanders. Such a conspiracy might attain success also under a despot- 
ism — provided it were organized in the interests of a prominent member of the 
ruling family. But in a country where representative government is established, 



274 IRELAND, FROJI 1848 TO 1875. 

it was clear to him, that any revolutionary plot intended to succeed must em- 
brace a large proportion of the people, and must array them on the field as fully 
trained and equipped as their opponents. We do not pretend to state that 
Stephens laid down these principles for himself. He borrowed them every one 
from the revolutionists of the Continent, by whom they had been elaborated 
out of long experience and many failures. But he deserves some credit for 
borrowing these principles ; and still more for the skill with which he applied 
them. Nor was his attention confined strictly to the matters we have men- 
tioned. From the outset — and here again he showed how admirably he had 
learnt the lesson of conspiracy, as taught on the Continent — he neglected no 
means of diminishing the moral strength of his opponent, and of adding to the 
moral strength of the I. R. B. He did his best to sap the reputation of his 
antagonists and to shake the faith of their adherents, while preparing to en- 
counter them hand to hand." 

But the ends for which he sought were not destined to be reached. Yet, 
although the direct result for which Stephens and O'Mahony labored was not 
a success, their labors did more toward drawing nearer that end than did any 
other scheme of the century. It prepared the people to understand the true 
meaning of Nationalism ; it caused the masses in Ireland to watch more closely 
the workings of the government under which they groaned, and it effected, 
among the most apathetic, a spirit of patriotism and unity that never before ex- 
isted together in the island. In a word, the Fenian movement educated the 
people to the understanding that their concerted will could not be overlooked, 
and hence the success of the Parnell movement. 

The chaotic condition of the Irish people, after the failure of '48, was 
welded into a solid National feeling by the leaders of '66, and the Home 
Rulers had a much better ship to ride upon than broken and uneven planks. 
And now we have come to the stirring events of " the rising," — which astounded 
the world by its daring, and concerning which the world was even more aston- 
ished by the ferocity with which that uprising was quelled and its leaders 
punished. 

As a matter of fact, the rising of February, 1867, would have been a com- 
plete success only for the treachery of one man. That man was Corydon. 
Than whom, in any period of the world's history, no greater scoundrel lived. 
He was trusted by the leaders ; he was their favorite messenger for many 



IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 275 

months, and he used that friendship and confidence only to betray them and 
their schemes for Ireland's regeneration. 

There cannot be a doubt but that, if the attack on Chester Castle had suc- 
ceeded, the features of the "conspiracy" would have shown to greater advan- 
tage if its scheme did not result as had been conceived. To use the words of 
Rutherford, " It was a clever plan, and, had the secret been kept, we think it 
would have succeeded." 

But Corydon had communicated the plans of the leaders to the British Gov- 
ernment, hence no attack was made. Almost every move in a similar direction 
in Ireland was frustrated by similar venality upon the part of some coward or 
informer. 

It is useless to go into the details of the various meetings of determined 
Irishmen on the 5th of March, 1867. Their every move was known to "the 
authorities"; the cause of the failure was not want of organization or want of 
generalship. Everything was planned in such a manner that success could not 
have failed, if the peculiarly strategic arrangements of the chiefs had been kept 
secret ; but there were more than a dozen Corydons — veritable excrescences 
upon the fair name of Irishman. And, to put the case in a nutshell — the up- 
rising failed. It was not a failure ; its importance has done much toward forc- 
ing England to regard Ireland's claims ; and only for the men of '67, the great 
Parnell movement could never have succeeded as it has done. 

In consequence of the treachery of a few, the leading measures of the 
"rising" had to be abandoned, and, as a result, "only one affair on the open" 
happened which is worthy of particular notice. It was at Kilclooney Wood, 
near Mitchelstown. Here five or six of the leaders, McClure, Peter O'Neill Crow- 
ley, Kelly, John O'Neill, and Thomas Walsh among the number, had secreted 
themselves. They lived upon bread and milk for several days, which was 
brought to them from the village by Crowley's little nephew. But the authori- 
ties discovered their hiding-place. Luckily, Or unluckily, they did not discover 
how many of them were there, and, supposing that a large body of Fenians 
were concentrated there, they ordered two divisions (one of military and one of 
constabulary) to surround the wood. Just at the time when these large bodies 
of the English army were marching down the hillsides from opposite directions, 
a very curious incident happened, which I do not believe has ever before been 
published (I have it upon the authority of two of those who were present). 



276 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 

It was in the dawn of the morning. A mist had gathered around the hill- 
tops and was settling thickly in the valley, where a small stream ran through 
the wood. From the Cork side the constabulary (numbering several hundred) 
moved down the hill toward an opening in the wood near the river. They had 
information that it was here the Fenian force was concentrated. 

Upon the other side about two thousand soldiers marched down the wood- 
side, bravely as did the 600 make their charge at Balaclava. And all of this 
force was directed against five half-starved Irishmen. Half-starved because of 
their outlawry. 

When, in the gray dawn, the soldiers saw the dark mass of constabulary on 
the opposite bank, their leaders decided that they were the Fenians and ordered 
their men to fire. Result — ten policemen killed and several wounded. 

The constabulary waited for no order ; they promptly returned the fire of 
the "red coats"; but with much more deadly effect — they are much better 
marksmen. Result — about forty soldiers killed and innumerable wounded. 

It was just then that, when the smoke cleared away, the fog lifted and Her 
Majesty's men discovered their mistake ; and it was just then, too, that Peter 
O'Neill Crowley, against the advice of his companions, decided to force his way 
through the English forces or die there. And he did die there. Standing in 
the middle of the little stream he discharged every chamber of his revolver at 
the British soldiery and fell, pierced by a score of bullets. 

He was used as a positive target by the now maddened soldiers and police ; 
and in this way can be explained the fact that the fatal bullet struck him in the 
back ; for he stood between the lines. A monument to his memory has been 
erected close by the spot where he fell ; and it will, in times to come, be pointed 
to as the grave of the last man who shed his blood doing battle for Ireland. 





^^y^c-c^/G 



From an original drawing; from life. 



LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



Daniel O'Connell. 




Honoring the Memory of the great Irish Liberator. 

" Every man of Irish birth or blood will treasure this statue to O'Connell by the celebrated 
Irish sculptor, Dennis B. Sheehan, to be erected among the other historic figures adorning 
Central Park, New York City." 



CHAPTEE I. 

Birth — Family— Sceneey of Ireland in general, and op Kerry in particular. 

AJSTIEL O'CONNELL — one of the most illustrious, if not the 
most illustrious, of the public men of Ireland — was born in Car- 
hen House, the residence of his father, Mr. Morgan O'Connell, 
■^jEjT near the small town of Cahirciveen, in the county of Kerry, on the 
6th of August, 1775. When, long years after, the flippant "Times " 
commissioner said derisively of Cahirciveen that "there wasn't a pane 
of glass in the whole town," O'Connell replied humorously in behalf of 
a town that might almost be called his birthplace, " If the commissioner 
had as many pains in his belly, his tongue would be more veracious and 
his wanderings less erratic" There now remains not a vestige of the 
house in which O'Connell was born. One morning, when already an 
old man, he stood with his friend and secretary, Mr. O'Neill Daunt, on 
the high ground at Hilgrove, overlooking the spot where he first saw the 
light. He pointed to the crumbling ruins of Carhen House, and spoke 
thus : "I was born there, but not in the house whose ruins you see. I 
was born in a house of which there is now no vestige, and of which the 
materials were used in constructing the edifice now dilapidated. Do 
you see that stream ? Many a trout I have caught in it in my youthful 
days. Those meadows near the river were always good land, but beyond 
was very unprofitable, boggy soil. My father always grew enough of wheat 
for the use of the family. Those ash trees behind the house on the other 
side of the river stand where there was once an old grove of much grosser 
ash trees. They were worth one hundred pounds, and my father one day 
thought proper to sell them for fifteen pounds. My uncle, General O'Con- 
nell, left Ireland to enter the French service at the age of fourteen, and 
he rose so rapidly that I was inspired by his example with an ambition 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



to distinguish myself. I always had one object in my ambitious views, 
and that was to do something for Ireland. My family had ever been 
Jacobites, as was only natural from the persecution the Catholics suf- 
fered. But they committed no overt acts of Jacobitism, their zeal 
extended no farther than keeping a print of the Pretender in the house. 
When the first emancipation acts passed, in 1778 and 1782, their spec- 
ulative Jacobitism was very much melted away as they saw the pros- 
pect opening to them of doing well under the reigning dynasty." 

O'Connell was very much displeased with " Mask," an anonymous 
writer who described his origin as humble. He states himself that his 
father's family was very ancient, and that his mother was a lady of the 
first rank. O'Connell was a Celt of pure blood ; his mother's maiden 
name was Kate O'Mullane ; she was the daughter of Mr. O'Mullane of 
Whitechurch, near Cork, the representative of an old Catholic family and 
proprietor of a fair estate, which subsequently passed by purchase into the 
hands of the O'Connells. For this mother O'Connell seems to have 
felt all that unbounded love and veneration of which his large, exu- 
berant and loving nature was capable. He delighted in giving expres- 
sion to these feelings. Long after her death, when he was himself a 
grandfather, he writes of her to the " Belfast Vindicator " of the 20th of 
January, 1841, in the following terms: "Yes, I ought to respect the sex 
in a peculiar manner. I am the son of a sainted mother, who watched 
over my childhood with the most faithful care. She was of a high order 
of intellect, and what little I possess has been bequeathed by her to me. 
I may in fact say, without vanity, that the superior situation in which 1 
am placed by my countrymen has been owing to her. Her last breath 
was passed, I thank Heaven, in calling down blessings on my head, and 
I valued her blessing since. In the perils and the dangers to which I have 
been exposed through life, I have regarded her blessing as an angel's 
shield over me, and as it has been my protection in this life, I look for- 
ward to it also as one of the means of obtaining hereafter a happiness 
greater than any this world can give." 

From this it will be seen that O'Connell was of opinion that he in- 
herited his abilities from his mother, and that the splendid success 
which crowned his efforts during so long a portion of his career, and 
which caused him to occupy so vast a space in the minds of his country- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



men, and even of foreigners, was mainly due to her. The great Napo- 
leon held much the same opinion respecting his mother. He believed 
that the marvelous energy of his character was derived from her. 
Goethe and numbers of other great men believed that they owed a 
similar debt of gratitude to their mothers. Indeed, though it be not 
universally the case, the instances in biography and history are striking 
and of frequent occurrence in which great men are under obligations to 
their mother for the possession of their highest gifts and energies, both 
intellectual and moral. 

Tet, however large may have been the share of his solid or more 
brilliant qualities which O'Connell owed to his mother, he must likewise 
have derived many strong features of his character from the paternal 
side, for the O'Connells who came before him were no common stock. 
They possessed both energy and shrewdness in a high degree. The 
latter quality appears to have enabled them to steer their way rather 
adroitly through the long ages of strife and intrigue and warfare and 
proscriptions and confiscations and penal laws that passed away from 
the invasion of Henry II. to the birth of the future "liberator." 
This craft or shrewdness at least helped them to preserve a far goodlier 
portion of landed property, indeed, a better share of the world's goods 
in general, than what many families far more renowned in Irish history 
were able to retain. Indeei, as a rule (and we might naturally expect 
that it would be so), the powerful Irish families and those most illus- 
trious for stern heroic resistance to the encroachments of the foreigner 
suffered the greatest reverses. We see this in the history of the varying 
fortunes of the O'Neills, O'Donnells, MacCarthys, O'Byrnes, MacMahons, 
O'Connors, O'Eeillys, Fitzgeralds of the south, and numbers of other 
tribes. The families that prospered were generally families of time- 
servers and deserters from the national cause. The O'Connells (or 
O'Conals) of old times, if not exactly lukewarm in their country's cause, 
and too ready to serve the stranger, at least possessed a good deal of 
worldly prudence, or, in other words, something of the wisdom of the 
serpent. Originally driven from Connelloe in Limerick, they became 
chiefs of Iveragh in Kerry. Generally speaking, they prospered. In 
1337 we find King Edward III. authorizing Hugh O'Connell to 
reduce to submission, by force of arms, certain clans in the county of 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 



Limerick. This chief's son, another Hugh, vigorously defends the lands 
of his clan against the invasions of the Munster Geraldines, and also 
mixes the blood of the O'Connells with the illustrious race of Brian 
Boiroihme, by contracting a marriage with Marguerita, daughter of the 
prince of Thomond. Jeffery O'Connell (the son of Hugh and Mar- 
guerita), whose name appears as chief of his "nation " in a royal order 
on the Irish exchequer bearing date 1372, married Catherine O'Connor, 
whose father was chieftain of Traghty O'Connor. Their son Daniel is 
mentioned as chief in a treaty dated 1421. He married a daughter of 
the gallant house of 0' Sullivan Beare. Their son, a third Hugh, was 
knighted by Sir Richard Nugent, who subsequently became lord-deputy 
of Ireland. King Henry VII. rewarded this chief for promoting the 
interests of England. By Hugh's marriage the house of O'Connell was 
able to boast another splendid family alliance, for Mary, his bride, was 
the daughter of MacCarthy More. Maurice, their son, took sides 
against King Henry VII. with Perkin Warbeck when that impostor or 
adventurer landed in Ireland to assert his claim to the sovereignty cf 
England and Ireland, in his assumed character of duke of York and 
son to King Edward IV. Somehow, Maurice managed to procure a 
pardon from Henry VII. on the 24th of August, 1496. Later we 
find Morgan O'Connell paying crown-rent in acknowledgment of the 
authority of Henry VIII. , and figuring as Edward VI. 's high- 
sheriff for the county Kerry. Eichard, son of Morgan, served in the 
army of Queen Elizabeth during the wars of Desmond. During the 
commotions and wars that followed the outbreak of 1641, Daniel O'Con- 
nell of Aghgore, in Iveragh, contrived to preserve his estate by carefully 
abstaining from taking any part in the rebellion. It is agreeable to 
find that in the "Williamite wars the O'Connells took the side of their 
country; Maurice O'Connell, of the county Clare, was brigadier-general 
and colonel of the king's guards; John O'Connell, the lineal ancestor of 
"the liberator," and possessor of the very place which was bequeathed 
to him by his uncle, Darrynane Abbey, raised and commanded a com- 
pany of foot, which was embodied in this regiment of royal guards ; Cap- 
tain John O'Connell fought, not without distinction, at Deny, the Boyne 
and Aughrim ; he was included in the capitulation of Limerick. O'Con- 
nell, in the face of considerable stupid and unmeaning uproar and inter 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



ruption, told an amusing anecdote of this military ancestor of his to that 
whimsical body of legislators, the English House of Commons, which, 
though on most occasions sufficiently observant of the decorum that 
befits grave deliberative assemblies, occasionally takes a fit of transform- 
ing itself into an uproarious and unruly mob. In spite of " their beastly 
bellowings," to use the language by which he characterized their vocife- 
rations on sundry occasions, he told this anecdote of Captain John: 
" On the morning of the battle of Aughrim, an ancestor of mine, who 
commanded a company of infantry in King James's army, reprimanded 
one of his men who had neglected to shave himself. ' Oh, your honor/ 
said the soldier, ' whoever takes the trouble of cutting my head off in 
battle may take the trouble of shaving it when he goes home.' " 

The captain's son was named Daniel. He was "the liberator's" 
grandfather. "The liberator's" father, Morgan, appears to have pos- 
sessed all the shrewdness of the race. In spite of the obstacles which 
the penal laws (concerning which detestable enactments I intend pres- 
ently to speak more at large) threw in the way of all inheritance, acqui- 
sition or testamentary devising of landed property by Catholics, Morgan 
contrived to acquire a small estate by purchase. This estate was held 
in trust for him by a Protestant, and so the prohibitory enactment was 
evaded. O'Connell on one occasion observed very justly, in reply to a 
priest who expressed wonder that the operations of the penal laws "left 
any Catholic estates in possession of their rightful owners," that "there 
would not have been any, only that individual Protestants were found a 
great deal honester than the laws. The Freeman family of Castlecoj' 
were trustees for a large number of Catholic gentlemen in the county of 
Cork. In Kerry there was a Protestant named Hugh Falvey who acted 
as trustee for many Catholic proprietors there. In Dublin there was a 
poor Protestant in very humble circumstances who was trustee for several 
Catholic gentlemen, and discharged his trust with perfect integrity." 
All this surely is very honorable to human nature in general and to 
Irish nature in particular. 

Mr. O'lSTeill Daunt, in his interesting "Personal Eecollections of O'Con- 
nell" — to which I may here observe I am indebted for the above partic- 
ulars, and to which I shall be under a large amount of indebtedness 
before I reach the conclusion of the present biography- — tells us that 



6 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



O'Connell had an estate called Glencara, near the lake of Cahara, which 
had been in the O'Connell family from days anterior to those of the penal 
code. "When Mr. Daunt expressed astonishment that Glencara had 
escaped confiscation, O'Connell replied, " Oh, they did not find it out. It 
is hidden among wild mountains in a very remote situation, which was 
wholly inaccessible in those days from the want of roads, and thus it- 
escaped their clutches." On another occasion O'Connell said to O'Neill 
Daunt, "If ever I took a title it would be earl of Glencara." 

In Dr. Smith's history of Kerry, strange to say, there is hardly any 
mention of the O'Connell family. But this can be satisfactorily accounted 
for. It appears that Dr. Smith once visited Darrynane, and spent some 
days with O'Connell's grandfather. The old gentleman entertained the 
historian most hospitably, and gave him many interesting details of local 
and family history. Dr. Smith, pleased with the particulars communi- 
cated to him, announced his intention of giving a conspicuous place in 
his history to the traditions of the O'Connell tribe. But his host 
entreated him not on any account to carry out this flattering idea. " "We 
have peace in these glens, Mr. Smith," said old Mr. O'Connell, " and 
amid their seclusion enjoy a respite from persecution. We can still in 
these solitudes profess the beloved faith of our fathers. If man is against 
us, God assists us. He gives us wherewithal to pay for the education of 
our children in foreign lands and to further their advancement in the 
Irish Brigade; but if you make mention of me or mine, these seaside 
solitudes will no longer yield us an asylum. The Sassenagh will scale 
the mountains of Darrynane, and we too shall be driven out upon the 
world without house or home." Dr. Smith complied with the wishes of 
the venerable head of the O'Connells. In his histoiy there is only a 
slight mention of the O'Connell clan. 




CHAPTEB II. 

■Childhood of O'Connell — Paul Jones off the coast of Kerry — O'Connell masters 

THE ALPHABET QUICKLY — HlS FEAR OF DISGRACE — CAPTAIN Cook's " VOYAGE ROUND THE 

World " — Nomadic gentry — Early Anticipations of greatness — O'Connell's uncle 
Maurice, surnamed "Hunting-Cap" — His love of old ballads — Encounter with a 
mad bull — Active habits — The Crelaghs and the Kerry " colonels " — His father 

ATTACKED BY A BAND OF ROBBERS — PRIVATE THEATRICALS — HlS EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAIN- 
ING — Protestant visitors and holy water — His uncle Maurice's coffin — MacCar- 
thy More and the priest — The American war. 

'zp 1ST a former chapter I said O'Connell was born in 1775. By a 
M remarkable coincidem 



coincidence this was the year that the illustrious 
Henry Grattan, Ireland's most splendid orator, and perhaps 
her greatest patriot too, first took his seat in the Irish House 
of Commons, and commenced his glorious career of patriotism. 
This year also was signalized by the skirmish of Lexington, the battle 
of Bunker's Hill, the leaguer of Boston, — in a word, the uprising of the 
American colonists in that memorable revolt against English taxation 
and tyranny, that was destined not merely to humble the pride of 
Britain by transforming her colonies into a mighty young republic, but 
to shake the foundations of the worn-out institutions of the Old "World 
and lead the way to tremendous revolutions, which, if they have failed to 
cause any veritable progress in the affairs of. mankind in general, at least 
have opened the path of liberty and glory to many down-trodden nations, 
and, in their remote results, have tended in a great degree to modify the 
forms of society and government and life in general in all civilized and 
many uncivilized countries First and foremost, this American war was 
sure to benefit Ireland, for it placed England in a position of difficulty 
and humiliation. Even in the third year of the war a British army, com- 
manded by a man of genius, the poetic lieutenant-general Burgoyne, 
was forced to surrender. To repeat O'Connell's oft-uttered saying, 
" England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity." 

Every one has heard of the celebrated Paul Jones, who, if he cannot, 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



in strictness, be said to have been the first who hoisted the " star-span- 
gled " banner on board an American ship-of-war, was at least the first 
who made the American navy a terror to the foes of the thirteen repub- 
lics. Paul Jones was hovering off the coast of Kerry in the year 1778 ; 
one of O'Connell's earliest recollections was associated with this cruise 
of the redoubtable Paul ; the great Agitator was then a child in his 
nurse's arms ; she carried the little fellow down to the shore, where he 
beheld, no doubt with curious and wondering eyes, the two boats' crews 
whom Paul had sent off with towing-ropes to get his vessel out of shal- 
low water ; these fellows had been prisoners of war at Brest ; the choice 
had been offered them of either sailing with Jones or staying in prison ; 
they had agreed to sail with the bold sea-rover, with a mental reserva- 
tion to escape at the earliest opportunity that presented itself ; here, off 
the coast of Kerry, they found the opportunity ; they cut the towing- 
ropes and rowed ashore ; immediately on landing they went to the near- 
est public-house to have a jolly carouse in sailor's fashion, leaving some 
firearms in the boats. Some peasants found the guns and drenched 
them, and the sailors were arrested by orders of Mr. Hassett and brought 
to the jail of Tralee, the county town of Kerry ; they exclaimed loudly 
against their incarceration, maintaining, not without a show of justice, 
that they had neither been guilty of, nor intended to commit, any breach 
of the laws, and that consequently the authorities had no right to con- 
sign them to "durance vile." O'Connell, referring to the occurrence in 
after years, said, " I well recollect a tall fellow, who was mounted on a 
gray horse, remonstrating angrily at this coercion. ~No legal charge, of 
course, could be sustained against them, and accordingly, in the end, 
they were released." The tall fellow "seemed to be the lawyer of his 
party." 

It is no wonder that this occurrence fixed itself deeply in O'Connell's 
memory. Adventures and adventurers of the sea have been at all times 
dear to the imaginations of children. The boys of antiquity no doubt 
delighted alike in the mythical voyage of Jason and the Argonauts for 
the golden fleece; in the poetic legends of the wanderings and ever- 
varying adventures of Ulysses and iEneas ; in the authentic accounts 
of the voyages of Hanno and Nearchus, and in the sea-fights of Phor- 
mion and the Athenian navy. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



In early boyhood O'Connell was adopted by his uncle Maurice, known 
throughout Kerry by the sobriquet of " Hunting-cap ;" this nickname 
stuck to old Maurice on account of his fondness for that style of head- 
gear. As Charles XII. of Sweden seldom or never laid aside his jack- 
boots and coarse soldier's coat, or Frederick the Great his blue military 
coat and cocked hat, so Uncle Maurice was hardly ever seen without his 
hunting-cap. It was this gentleman who defrayed the expense of the 
boy's education and sent him to the school of that Eev. Mr. Harrington 
to whom I have already referred ; this school was in Little Island, near 
Cork. It is said that, owing to his tendency to become too much ab- 
sorbed in study, our hero, when a boy, got the reputation of being some- 
what cold and distant. 

Mr. O'lSTeill Daunt, in his "Personal Recollections," tells us that 
often during their journeys together, O'Connell, after a tolerably long 
silence, would suddenly "break out with a snatch of some old ballad in 
Irish or English." One day he sang out — 

"I leaned my back against an oak, 
I thought it was a trusty tree; 
But first it bent and then it broke — 
; Twas thus my love deserted me." 

Mr. Daunt expressed surprise that these snatches of old ballads 
should linger in his memory. "Oh," cries O'Connell, " I liked ballads 
of all things when I was a boy. In 1787 I was brought to the Tralee 
assizes. Assizes were then a great mart for all sorts of amusements, and 
I was greatly taken with the ballad- singers. It was then I heard two 
ballad-singers, a man and a woman, chanting out the ballad from which 
you heard me sing that verse ; he sang the first two lines, she sang the 
third line ; both sang together the fourth, and so on through the whole 
ballad." 

This stanza, remembered from the Amcebean performance of the man 
and woman in Tralee, if infinitely superior is certainly less amusing 
than some verses composed by an unlucky poet of "the kingdom of 
Kerry," which stuck in a corner of O'Connell's memory among all sorts 
of metrical odds and ends. The poor bard, being in a starving condition 



10 THE LIFE Of DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

in Pans, was recommended to pay his court to the minister Sartine in a 
strain of panegyric. Here is the first couplet : 

"Yellow Phoebus, inspire my poitrine 
To sing the praises of Monsieur de Sartine." 

Between Hillgrove and Cahirciveen, O'Connell, when a lad, very nar- 
rowly escaped losing his life in an encounter with an infuriated bull. 
The bull, like his namesake, John Bull, in after times, was seized with a 
mighty great desire to annihilate poor Dan. He ran at him, and Dan's 
retreat was cut off by a high ditch. The career of the future Liberator 
seemed about to be prematurely cut short. But it was written in the 
book of fate, as the great Napoleon would say, that Dan was to speak 
and do great things. At the moment that his destruction appeared 
inevitable the brave little fellow faced the taurine monster pretty much 
in the same courageous way he used to face and outface the other formidable 
Bull in after years. He threw a good-sized stone at the bull's forehead, 
and stunned him. This gave Dan breathing-time before the brute could 
recover himself. Meanwhile, a troop of boys came to the assistance of 
our juvenile hero and pelted the discomfited bull out of the field ; and 
thus Dan was rescued, and lived on to enjoy before he died almost the 
highest earthly greatness and renown. It were curious enough, if one 
had time and inclination, to speculate on the very considerable differ- 
ence it would have made to Ireland and the Irish if that mad bull had 
succeeded in carrying out his wicked will, and had incontinently tossed 
young Daniel on his horns and out of existence. 

One can easily guess, after hearing this anecdote, that O'Connell was 
from his earliest years blessed with a fair share of physical as well as 
mental energy. He says of himself, " Activity is with me a habit. I 
was always active, and my brother John was always active. I re- 
member one morning, when John was a lad, seeing him prepare to set 
off on a walk of several miles at sunrise, after having sat up the whole 
night dancing and without having gone to bed at all. I said to him, 
' John, you had better take your mare.' ' Oh,' said John, ' I'll spare the 
mare ; the walk will do me good.' So off he set, and his mare expired 
t>f fat in the stable the very same day. How often have I heard the 
voice of old John O'Connell calling out at cockcrow under our gate. ' Cur 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 11 



a ma/ugh Shane O'Connell agios an cu' " ("Send out John O'Connell and 
the greyhound 11 ). 

In a subsequent portion of this biography we shall have occasion to 
see Daniel O'Connell, even in his old days, on foot, with a leaping-pole 
in his hand, hunting the deer over his native mountains of Kerry, and 
with a vigor and activity unsurpassed by the most youthful and indefat- 
igable of his companions in the chase. 

O'Connell used to tell some very curious and amusing particulars of 
a class of cow-stealers that existed in Kerry in the days of his child- 
hood. These anecdotes will give the reader a curious picture of the 
state of society in Kerry in those wild times antecedent to the repeal of 
the penal laws. 

" When I was a child " — O'Connell is speaking — " there was a horde 
of cow-stealers called the Crelaghs inhabiting the mountains of Glan- 
cara. They used to steal cows in Galway and Clare and sell them in 
this part of the country ; and then, with admirable impartiality, they 
would steal cows here and sell them in Clare or Galway. They were a 
terrible nuisance to the peasantry, but they received a sort of negative 
protection — that is, they were left unmolested by the leading Protestant 
gentry, who then were popularly called 'colonels.' To these 'colonels' 
they occasionally made presents of cattle. Impunity emboldened them, 
and at length they stole fourteen cows from my father, who was in indif- 
ferent health at the time. This was intolerable, and my father collected 
a numerous party to surround the Crelaghs' hut in one night, in order to 
take and surrender them to justice. The Crelaghs rushed out and made 
a desperate defence. Two of them were taken, but the rest escaped. 
My father shot one man through the hand in the scuffle, but the wounded 
fellow contrived to get off. Those who escaped still continued their dep- 
redations, and the power of the few Catholic gentry to check them was 
sadly crippled by the legal incapacity of Catholics to hold the commis- 
sion of the peace. 

"The Crelaghs resolved to avenge themselves upon my father, who 
got information one dark evening, when out riding, that the gang lay in 
wait to murder him. His informant desired him to go home by a dif- 
ferent road ; he did so and encountered the ruffians, who rushed down the 
hills to meet him and fired ; his mare, which was very wicked, kicked and 



12 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



threw hirn. Whilst he was down they fired again, and missed him 
a second time; he remounted, and, striking spurs in his mare, was 
speedily oeyond their reach, escaping several shots that were fired after 
him. 

" It was not very easy for a Catholic to interest the law in his behalf 
even against these pestilent vagabonds ; but at length, by good luck, one 
of the gang robbed a Mr. Hassett, a Protestant gentleman, of his purse 
and dress-wig upon the highway ; this incited Mr. Hassett to spirited 
measures, amongst which was his getting himself made a magistrate 
and using his justiceship to bring the rogues to punishment. After 
this the gang was soon dispersed; three were taken and hanged the 
rest escaped." 

The Crelaghs, we see, made presents of cattle to the Protestant gen- 
try, who, being ,of the Ascendency faction, could be magistrates or what- 
ever they pleased to be, and so were objects of terror to these outlaws. 
The Catholic gentry, on the other hand, few in numbers and deprived of 
all civil rights, were in no degree formidable ; on the contrary, they were 
alike incapable of protecting themselves or others. The Crelaghs, then, 
did not think it worth while to conciliate them by offering them the gift 
of any portion of their spoils ; of course, if the Catholic gentry had pos- 
sessed the same influence that the "colonels" had, they too would have 
been tempted to forget their duties to society. Would they have yielded 
to the bribes of the Crelaghs in the same manner ? Truly it was a sin- 
gular state of society when such despicable bribes could seduce men of 
rank to a base connivance at the miserable thefts and depredations of a 
gang of cow-stealers. 

For us, living in the present day, it is surprising to contemplate the 
great extent to which, in the times I am referring to, the belief in the 
absolute power of these " colonels " was rooted in the minds of the peo- 
ple ; in fact, the authority of the law seemed as nothing when cast into 
the balance against their good will and pleasure. The odd notion even 
prevailed amongst the predatory gangs which infested some of the wild 
fastnesses of Kerry that to give validity to a judicial sentence it should 
be backed by the assent of one or other of these local potentates. Mr. 
Daunt gives a singular instance in illustration of this : A man was con- 
victed of horse-stealing at Tralee ; as he seemed quite careless and indif- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 13 

ferent while the judge was passing sentence of death upon him, a by- 
stander asked him, "Do you know what my lord is saying, you stupid 
omadhawn?" "To be sure I do!" replies the convict, preserving the 
same surprising air of unconcern, "but I don't care what he says, for 
Colonel Blennerhassett is looking at me all the time, and he says 
nothing." 

This would be ludicrous to a degree if the circumstances in which 
the man stood did not rather make it shocking ; in truth, the adminis- 
tration of the law in Ireland in those wild days is a curious subject and 
worthy of deep study. In ordinary cases between man and man it was 
doubtless far worse than it is at present; in all cases, however, of a 
political complexion, things legal move to-day pretty much in the same 
groove that they moved in then ; nor do the country-people of Ireland 
meet with any improved administration of justice worth speaking of in 
cases of the agrarian kind. Mr. Gladstone's new law of landlord and 
tenant, though doubtless it has made some improvement on the past 
condition of the tenant-farmers, has fallen far short of the too-sanguine 
and even foolish expectations which that minister's accession to the 
office of prime minister awoke in the minds of too many gullible Irish- 
men. "We have already had experience enough of the workings of the 
new act to see clearly that landlords can still make the laws an instru- 
ment for the oppression, and even extermination, of their tenantry ; in 
short, Irishmen should receive and lay to heart as gospel truth the 
memorable maxim uttered by John Mitchel in 1848, and since inculcated 
over and over by him and by other patriots, that " no good thing, nor 
even the commencement of a good thing, for Ireland can come out of 
the English Parliament." 

To return for a moment to " Colonel" Blennerhassett. Shortly after 
the first accouchement of his lady, a neighbor called at " the big house," 
and, after some other inquiries, asked how " the colonel was ?" 

"Which do you mean, the young colonel or the old one?" asked the 
servant in return. This "young Colonel" Blennerhassett was at that 
moment rather less than one week old. This was belief in the " colonel- 
ship" of the gentry of the Protestant Ascendency with a vengeamce! 

In his boyhood, O'Connell sometimes took a part in private theat- 
ricals. His memory was so good that he once got sixty lines by heart 



14 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

in an hour, and that without the slightest trouble. All amateurs, how- 
ever are not, like O'Connell, blessed with excellent memories. Some 
persons, indeed, are awfully stupid about getting a part off by heart. 
Sometimes the stupidity is very droll. "When our hero, in his young 
days, along with some companions, got up a private play in Tralee, his 
friend, Ralph Hickson, was to take a part. All he had to say was, 
" Put the horses to the coach ;" and yet he contrived to make a stu- 
pendous blunder in trying to repeat on the stage even that little sen- 
tence of six short words. 

"How could he manage to blunder that?" a friend asked O'Connell. 

" Why, he said ' Put the horses into the coach !' " 

O'Connell was carefully instructed in religious matters in his youth. 
Doubtless his parish priest, Father 0' Grady, was an excellent and con- 
scientious pastor, zealous like most of the Catholic priests in Ireland 
during the rage of penal persecution. I have already given some anec- 
dotes illustrative of the whimsical humor of this spiritual guide of 
O'Connell's early years. He seems to have been a primitive, merry- 
souled, kind-hearted old man, characterized by a sort of quaint and 
guileless simplicity altogether pleasant to meet with. While there can be 
no doubt that he and others took great pains to rear O'Connell in the strict- 
est religious principles, so that in every period of his after- life "the Lib- 
erator's" devotion to and reverence for the faith of his fathers remained 
earnest and unalterable, there is yet no just foundation for the statements 
of those who have asserted that he was originally intended for the priest- 
hood. In a letter addressed to the editor of The Dublin Evening Post, 
bearing date the 17th of July, 1828, O'Connell endeavors to correct this 
and another misstatement: "It is right to be accurate even in trifles." 
Then, referring to a paragraph which had appeared in the papers, his 
letter says : "It contained two mistakes. It asserted that I was born 
in 1774; and, secondly, that I was intended for the Church. I was not 
intended for the Church. No man respects, loves or submits to the 
Church with more alacrity than I; but I was not intended for the 
priesthood. It is not usual with the Catholic gentry in Ireland to de- 
termine the religious destiny of their children ; and being an eldest son, 
born to an independence, the story of my having been intended for the 
Church is a pure fabrication. I was not born in the year 1774. Be it 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 15 

known to all whom it may concern that I was born on the 6th of Au- 
gust, 1775 — the very year in which the stupid obstinacy of British 
oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in 
arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence 
which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed 
glory and conferred liberty pure and sublime on America." 

O'Connell used to tell a good story of two Protestant gentlemen who 
were visitors on one occasion at Darrynane Abbey, the seat of his uncle 
Maurice. Our hero himself was stopping there at the time. " On Sun- 
day," says O'Connell, "as there was no Protestant place of worship 
near, they were reduced to the alternative of going to mass or doing 
without public worship. They chose to go to mass, and on entering the 
chapel they fastidiously kept clear of the holy water which the clerk was 
sprinkling copiously on all sides. The clerk observed this, and feeling 
his own dignity and that of the holy water compromised by their Prot- 
estant squeamishness, he quietly watched them after service, and plant- 
ing himself behind the sanctuary door, through which they had to pass, 
he suddenly slashed the entire contents of his full-charged brush into 
their faces. I thought I should have been choked with laughing. You 
can't conceive anything more ludicrous than the discomfited look the 
fellows had." O'Connell's fancy was so tickled with the recollection of 
this grotesque incident that, when telling it, he couldn't refrain from 
chuckling heartily for some minutes. 

lie used to tell a singular anecdote of his uncle, old Maurice, alias 
"Hunting-cap." "Old Mr. Connell of Darrynane pitched upon an oak 
tree to make his own coffin, and mentioned his purpose to a carpenter. 
In the evening the butler entered, after dinner, to say that the carpen- 
ter wanted to speak with him. ' For what ?' asked my uncle. ' To talk 
about your honor's coffin,' said the carpenter, putting his head inside 
the door over the butler's shoulder. I wanted to get the fellow out, but 
my uncle said, ' Oh, let him in by all means. Well, friend, what do 
you want to say to me about my coffin ?' ' Only, sir, that I'll saw up 
the oak tree your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That 
would be wasteful,' answered my uncle ; ' I never was more than six feet 
and an inch in my vamps the best day I ever saw.' 'But your honor 
will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am 



16 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

sure, you blockhead ; but I'll stretch, no doubt, perhaps a couple of inches 
or so ; well, make my coffin six feet six, and I'll warrant that will give 
me room enough.' " 

"We may feel satisfied that the old ruins to be found in so many parts 
of romantic Kerry, with the hoaiy traditions and legends hanging and 
clinging like the ivy around them, deeply impressed the mind of O'Con- 
nell in his youth, and bound his heart by the strong chain of association 
more and more firmly every day to the love of his birthplace and his 
entire fatherland. Doubtless, ere he reached manhood, he had often vis- 
ited Killarney and all the other enchanting spots that make the south- 
west of Ireland a sort of fairy region. On the occasion of such visits he 
would see Muckross Abbey, still beautiful and impressive even in decay ; 
the crumbling walls of Ross Castle and other time-haunted ruins, not less 
venerable or suggestive of the past and its vanished forms of life; he 
would hear recited the innumerable local legends of The O'Donohoe ; alike 
the ruins and the tales of other days would take hold of his imagination 
and become mysteriously intertwined with all his feelings. The subtle 
influences of old legendary stories, whether of love or terror, are wellnigh 
inexplicable. O'Connell used occasionally to refer in after life to the 
particulars connected with local antiquities and traditions which he had 
gleaned and treasured up in the days of his youth. On one occasion, 
having asked a clergyman if he had seen the old church of Kilkee, near 
Greena, on the road from Killarney, he told the following traditional 
anecdote of an act of sacrilege committed by one of the fierce and haughty 
chiefs of Desmond. Doubtless he had often thrilled at the recital of this 
and similar wild deeds in his boyhood. Speaking of the old church, he 
said, "It was unroofed and desecrated over three centuries ago; the 
Macarthy Mhor of the day was in the habit of attending mass there, 
and ordered the officiating priest to delay the celebration of mass every 
Sunday until he should arrive. The priest complied for some Sundays, 
but one day the chief was so late that the priest, in order no longer to 
detain the congregation, commenced divine service ; he had not proceeded 
far when Macarthy Mhor entered the church, and being enraged at the 
presumption of the priest in neglecting to wait for him, rushed to the 
altar, and felled the priest to the floor. The bishop could not bear that 
the scene of such a crime should continue the centre of parochial devo- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 17 

don, and accordingly he got the church unroofed and another one built 
in a different part of the parish." 

It appears that a great many Protestants of Killarney used to get 
married in this old ruined church of Kilkee. As, in case of their not get- 
ting a license, it was necessary for them to be married in a parish church, 
many couples modestly preferred the seclusion of the ivy-festooned walls 
of mouldering Kilkee, where they would be safe from all prying intrusion 
during the matrimonial ceremony, to the staring and curious crowds sure 
to gather around all wedding-parties in the church of Killarney. 

He spoke thus on another occasion of certain old burial-grounds 
between Cahirciveen and Darrymore: "I never can pass the old 
burial-grounds of Kilpeacon and Killogroin, among the hills, without 
thinking how strange it is that they should be totally deserted by the 
present generation ; nobody ever is buried in either of them now, and 
they have been disused so long ago that not even a tradition exists 
among the peasantry of the time when, or the cause wherefore, inter- 
ments were discontinued in them." 

On one of the old castles of his native county he made these reflec- 
tions : " What an undigested mass of buildings are the relics of the earl 
of Desmond's court at Castle Island! and how much the difference 
between our habits and those of our forefathers is marked by the archi- 
tecture of their dwellings and of ours ! The old castles, or rather the old 
towers, of Ireland were manifestly constructed for inhabitants who only 
stayed within when the severity of the weather would not allow them to 
go out ; there seems to have been little or no provision in the greater 
number of them for internal comfort ; and what a state of social inse- 
curity they indicate ! Small loopholes for defence, low, small entrance- 
doors for the same purpose — evidently it was a more important object to 
keep out the enemy than to ventilate the house." The earls of Desmond 
here referred to were the Norman Fitzgeralds, not the chiefs of the 
Macarthy clan, who had been princes of Desmond in the old Celtic times. 



CHAPTER III. 

Youth and early manhood of O'Connell — O'Connell at Louvain, St. Omer's and Douay 
— In danger during the French Revolution — Anecdote of John and Henry Sheares 
and the execution of louis xvi. — o'connell and the crowns of france and bel- 
GIUM — Dan and the banker — Jeffreys of Blarney Castle: — Further relaxations 

OF THE PENAL LAWS — CATHOLICS ADMITTED TO THE BAR — O'CONNELL A LAW-STUDENT IN 

London — Anecdotes of George IV., Mrs. Fitzherbert and Charles James Fox — 
O'Connell sees George III. in danger — Slow travelling of the last century — Pitt 
and fox as orators — drinking habits of the last century resisted by o'connell 
— Cousin Kane, an odd character — O'Connell in the yeomanry — He attends a 
political meeting in '97 — Sees Lord Edward Fitzgerald — O'Connell gets a fever 
from sleeping in wet clothes, and is near dying — sallies forth on his first cir- 
CUIT — O'Connell, Harry Deane Grady and the soldiers — Robbers — Anecdote cf 
Grady — Journey with H. D. Grady — Passing the Kilworth Mountains — Sudden 

DEATH OF A COUSIN OF O'CONNELL'S — INNS WHEN O'CONNELL WAS A YOUNG MAN — He 

travels with John Philpot Curran — Arthur O'Connor — Humorous bar anecdotes 
— Robber incident — Death of Brennan the robber — O'Connell thinks of writ- 
ing A NOVEL — O'CONNELL'S COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE — ANECDOTE OF COLLINS — AUTO- 
biographical anecdote o'connell a zealous advocate of mary queen of scots — 

Lalor of Kellarney and the farm of Lisnababie — Old roads — Inn at Milstreet 
— a cow of feeling! "dark oblivion of a brow" — corrupt judges. 

'CORNELL spent about a year at the school of Father Harring- 
ton. The reputation for ability and application which he 
acquired there reached the ears of his uncle, General Count 
O'Connell, who began to feel a considerable interest in the boy. 
At the solicitation of the count, Uncle Maurice, alias " Hunting-cap," 
decided on going to the expense of giving their nephew a continental edu- 
cation. Accordingly, Dan was sentfirst to Louvain, and next to St. Omer's. 
This arrangement seems to have been quite agreeable to the lad, who at 
this period burned to make his name as distinguished as that of the general 
his uncle. O'Connell showed at St. Omer's the same cleverness he had 
already displayed at Father Harrington's ; he was always the foremost boy 
in his class. Another Munster boy, a cousin of his own, who subse- 
quently attained high position, was a formidable school-rival of his ; this 
was Christopher Fagan. The president of the college in Connell's time 
was the Reverend Dr. Stapylton. At this period (1791) the career of the 




THE LIFE OF DA.NIEL O'CONNELL. 19 

great Kevolution in France was advancing with daily-increasing terror 
and velocity. The outrages done to religion, the cruelties perpetrated 
against the members of the French aristocracy and the royal family in 
the course of this tremendous revolution naturally revolted O'Connell, 
whose instincts and training alike tended to make him in sentiment 
both an aristocrat and a Catholic. From this period may be dated his 
decided love of monarchic institutions, and his still more decided re- 
pugnance to all measures of a thoroughly revolutionary tendency. He 
afterwards, indeed, became a democratic leader and more or less dem- 
ocratic in principle, but his notions of democracy had little or nothing 
in common with those of the chief representatives of the European 
continental democracy. 

On one occasion, travelling in France at this period, he met in a dil- 
igence a very loquacious Gaul, who poured forth endless torrents of in- 
vective against England. O'Connell preserved an unbroken silence. At 
last, the Frenchman, surprised at his apparent callousness, exclaimed, 

"Do you hear? do you understand what I am saying, sir 9 " 

" Yes, I hear you ; I comprehend you perfectly." 

" Yet you do not seem angry." 

" Not in the least." 

" How can you so tamely bear the censures I pronounce against your 
country ?" 

"Sir, England is not my country. Censure her as much as you 
please, you cannot offend me. I am an Irishman, and my countrymen 
have as little reason to love England as yours have — perhaps less." 

When O'Connell went to St. Omer's he was accompanied by his 
younger brother, Maurice. They remained at that seminary for about 
a year. Their uncle begged the president, Dr. Stapylton, to give a can- 
did opinion of the merits and demerits of each of the lads. The presi- 
dent's answer proves that, in one instance at least, he was a man of pro- 
found penetration and remarkable foresight. " You desire," writes the 
reverend doctor, " to have my candid opinion respecting your nephews ; 
and you very properly remark that no habit can be worse than that of 
the instructors of youth who seek to gratify the parents of those under 
their care by ascribing to them talents and qualities which they do not 
really possess. You add that, being only the uncle of these young men, 



20 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

you can afford to hear the real truth respecting their abilities and de- 
ficiencies. It is not my habit to disguise the precise truth in reply to 
such inquiries as yours ; you shall therefore have my opinion with per- 
fect candor. 

" I begin with the younger, Maurice. His manner and demeanor are 
quite satisfactory. He is gentlemanly in his conduct and much loved 
by his fellow-students. He is not deficient in abilities, but he is idle 
and fond of amusement. I do not think he will answer for any labor- 
ious profession, but I will answer for it he will never be guilty of any- 
thing discreditable — at least, such is my firm belief. 

" With respect to the elder, Daniel, I have but one sentence to write 
about him, and that is, that I never was so much mistaken in my life as 
I shall be unless he be destined to make a remarkable figure in society." 

The two O'Connells seem to have spent about a year at St. Omer's. 
Daniel distinguished himself greatly there. We next find him spend- 
ing some months in Douay College in the year 1792. 

O'Connell does not appear to have incurred any personal danger in 
those terrible days of revolutionary bloodshed, save on one occasion. He 
frankly admits, however, that he was always in terror lest " the scoun- 
drels," as he calls the French " sans-culottes" "should cut our throats." 
The occasion of his being in personal danger was this: A wagoner 
of Dumouriez's army scared him and a set of his fellow-collegians who 
had walked out from Douay, crying, " Voila les jeunes jesuites ! les cap- 
ucins! les recollets" ("Behold the young Jesuits! the Capuchins! the 
Franciscan friars!") Panic-stricken, O'Connell and his companions 
ran back to their college. Luckily, they were not pursued. Our hero 
used long after this to repeat occasionally the verses composed at the 
time of the sanguinary Marat's death: 

"Marat est mort! 
Marat est mort! 
La France encore respire; 
Satan! Prends garde de toi, 
Car anjourd'hui a'il entre votre empire, 
Demain tu ne seras plus roi!" 

("Marat is dead! Marat is dead! France once more breathes freely. 
Satan! take care of yourself, for if to-day he enters your empire, 
to-morrow you shall be king no more.") 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 21 

O'Connell, in the decline of his life, told the following anecdote of 
those two unfortunate "United Irishmen," Henry and John Sheares, to 
Dr. R. R. Madden, the author of " The Lives of the United Irishmen." 
One day the doctor called upon him. " Oh, Madden !" cried " the Liber- 
ator " as he entered, " I was thinking, as I read your book, how glad you 
would have been to learn a trifling incident I could have told you about 
the Sheareses. I travelled with them in the Calais packet to England in 
1793. I left Douay on the 21st of January in that year, and arrived in 
Calais the very day the news arrived that the king and queen (?) had 
been guillotined. The packet had several English on board, who all, 
like myself, seemed to have been made confirmed aristocrats by the 
sanguinary horrors of the Revolution. They were talking of the execu- 
tion of the king and queen (?), and execrating the barbarity of their mur- 
derers, when two gentlemen entered the cabin — a tall man and a low one. 
These were the two Sheareses. Hearing the horrible doings at Paris 
spoken of, John Sheares said, 'We were at the execution.' 'Good 
Heaven!' exclaimed one of the Englishmen; 'how could you have got 
there ?' ' By bribing two of the National Guard to lend us their uni- 
forms,' answered Sheares. ' We obtained a most excellent view of the 
entire scene.' 'But, in God's name, how could you endure to witness 
such a hideous spectacle?' resumed the Englishman. John Sheares 
answered energetically — I never can forget his manner of pronouncing 
the words — 'From love of the cause!' " 

In telling this anecdote O'Connell's memory seems for the moment 
to play him false. He forgets that the king and queen of France were 
not either tried or executed together. Louis was executed on the 23d 
of January, 1793, and Marie Antoinette in the October of the same year. 
Perhaps, however, a false rumor had got aboard the vessel. The Shearses 
would necessarily be in a position to correct it. 

O'Connell added a slight particular about Henry Sheares, the elder 
brother. Henry remarked that it was the only time he had ever been 
at sea without danger of shipwreck. "I think, Madden," said Dan, in 
conclusion, " the whole story would have derived some zest from my being 
mixed up in it." What a singular contrast there was between the sub- 
sequent fate of O'Connell and that of those two hapless brothers, who 



22 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

were tried and executed together for their devotion to Ireland in the 
fatal and blood-stained year of '98 ! 

The bishop of Ardagh, probably Dr. O'Higgins, told O'Neill Daunt a 
whimsical circumstance — that a French captain of artillery said to him 
shortly after " the three glorious days of July " in 1830, " Some of us 
imagined that your O'Connell was born at St. Omer. Ah ! if he had 
been a native of our country, we should have made him king of the 
French." We have his own authority for the fact that at the election 
at which Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was chosen king of the Bel- 
gians, shortly after the revolt of the citizens of Brussels in 1830 against 
their Dutch masters, three votes were given to place O'Connell on the 
throne of the newly-created kingdom. 

In his early youth O'Connell won the friendship of Mr. Charles Jef- 
freys of Blarney Castle, county Cork. One night they met at the Cork 
theatre, where Mr. Jeffreys somehow or other got into a row. He would 
have been overmatched but for the timely assistance of O'Connell. From 
this night forward Mr. Jeffreys was always polite and attentive to our 
hero. Though a nephew of that infamous destroyer of his country's 
independence, the earl of Clare, Mr. Jeffreys through all his life remained 
an enemy of the act of union. He had been one of the members of an 
Irish deputation appointed to lay an anti-union petition at the feet of 
George III. in 1799, and in his old age, in 1840, we find him at a Eepeal 
meeting at Cork beside his old friend, O'Connell, moving one of the 
anti-union resolutions. After his speech on this occasion, feeling op- 
pressed by the heat and the crowd, the old man was forced to retire for 
a few moments from the building — Batty 's circus — in which the meeting 
was held. On his return a gentleman remarked to him that it was a 
dangerous experiment to expose himself again to the heat and the 
throng of the vast assembly. "I could not help it," said the fine old 
gentleman, enthusiastically; "my heart is with you all." 

In the years 1792 and 1793 concessions were made to the Catholics, 
one of which, at least, had the most important influence on the destiny 
and renown of Daniel O'Connell. Admission to the Bar was at last con- 
ceded to the Catholics. But for this O'Connell could never have stepped 
into that forensic arena in which some of his most glorious laurels were 
won. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 23 

In O'Connell's young days guests in Ireland were forced by their 
hosts to drink, whether they liked to do so or not. O'Connell tells us 
he was the first person in Iveragh to rebel against this custom of the 
fine old Irish gentlemen "all of the olden time." "After I returned 
from the Temple " (?), says he, "I introduced the fashion of resistance, 
and I soon had abettors enough. It was fortunate for me that I never 
while a youth could drink more than three glasses of wine without being 
sick, so that I had my personal convenience to consult in aid of tempe- 
rance. To be sure, I have seen some rare drinking-bouts ! In 1785, 
when less than ten years old, I was at the house of a friend near the 
seaside, and a sloop came in, of which the whole crew got drunk every 
night — Monday night on wine, Tuesday night on punch, Wednesday 
night on wine, Thursday night on punch, and so on, the only variety 
consisting in the alternation. What a change in our social habits since 
those days ! — a most happy change in this respect ! I believe there is 
no nation under heaven save our own in which the apostle of a great 
moral movement could meet the success that has attended Father 
Mathew." It is hardly necessary to say that O'Connell agreed with 
those who not merely thought Father Mathew' s success "highly honor- 
able to the Catholics," but "probably destined to be one of the means 
of extending the Catholic religion." 

Some anecdotes which he used to tell of a whimsical character, called 
" Cousin Kane," who flourished in Kerry in the days of his youth, are 
curiously illustrative of the jovial habits and of certain other singular 
features in the manners then prevalent in Irish society. 

"On occasion of festivity," says O'Connell, "I loved to preside at a 
side-table at Darrynane. I remember a jolly fellow of the name of Kane 
— everybody called him ' Cousin Kane.' He always lived from house to 
house, and kept two horses and twelve couple of dogs at other people's 
expense. One day there was a large dinner at Darrynane, and Kane 
was one of the guests at my side-table. A decanter of whisky stood 
before me, and I, thinking it was sherry — which it exactly resembled in 
color— filled ' Cousin Kane's ' glass. He drank it off, but immediately got 
into a rage with me for giving him whisky instead of wine. He gave 
me a desperate scolding, which he ended by holding out his glass and 
saying, ferociously, ' Fill it again, sir V 



24 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

It was in the spring of 1798, on the eve of some of Ireland's darkest 
days of agony, that Daniel O'Connell was called to the bar. After such 
a long and iniquitous exclusion of the Catholic body from the field of 
legal distinction, the time had at length arrived when a young Catholic 
Irishman of the highest forensic genius was to commence his career as 
a barrister, destined to win such triumphs in his profession as would 
necessarily cast the lustre of renown over himself, his despised co-re- 
ligionists, and even the whole Irish race. 

In this year of '98, so full of melancholy recollections for Ireland, we 
find O'Connell joining one of the yeomanry corps embodied to defend Dub- 
lin against the rebels. Of the members of O'ConneU's corps — the " Law- 
yers' Yeomanry Corps " — many were discovered to be members of the 
great secret organization of " United Irishmen." This discovery alarmed 
O'Connell, who was naturally under an apprehension lest, in some man- 
ner, he might be involved in a charge of disaffection to " the powers that 
be." I have just given his own admission that he was himself a United 
Irishman. Accordingly — manifesting some of the safe worldly prudence 
I have pointed out as characteristic of the O'Connell race — he determined 
to withdraw from the danger. In June, 1798, he left Dublin. As com- 
munication by land with the interior of the island was then cut off, he 
sailed with eighteen others for Cork in a potato-boat, bound for Court- 
masherry. They each gave the pilot half a guinea to put them ashore 
at the Cove of Cork. There they landed after a capital passage of six- 
and-thirty hours. We may rest assured that the discomforts of this odd 
voyage in the potato-boat were more than counterbalanced by the fun 
and frolic of the passengers. Doubtless, O'Connell himself, with his vein 
of genial, exuberant humor, was the very soul of the mirth on board. 
Even of the demon of sea-sickness the merry voyagers were sure to make 
a laughing-stock. 

Having landed safely, O'Connell travelled to his native Iveragh, and 
remained for some months at Carhen. Here the career of the future 
" liberator " was within a little of being prematurely cut short by an 
enemy fully as insidious and fatal as the Saxon government. In plain 
words, he was assailed by a severe fit of typhus fever in the August of 
'98. It was caused by his sleeping in wet clothes. He had dried them 
on him at the fire in a peasant's cabin. 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 25 

Between Milstreet and Macroom, O'Connell used to point out the 
old mountain-roads, over which, in former days, the judges when on cir- 
cuit were obliged to travel. If persons observed to him that these roads 
seemed quite impassable for wheel-carriages, he would remark that the 
old infirm judges travelled over them in their carriages at a foot-pace ; 
the younger judges went circuit on horseback. 

On one occasion Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell "whether he admired 
and sympathized with Arthur O'Connor?" Arthur O'Connor, it ia 
scarcely necessary to observe, was one of the most prominent leaders of 
the "United Irishmen." He was also uncle to Fergus O'Connor, O'Con- 
nell's assistant-agitator at a later period of his career. 

"More no than yes," was O'Connell's reply to Mr. Daunt's inquiry.. 
" I had, indeed, admired him until Curran disclosed to me that he had a 
plan for an agrarian law, dividing the land in equal portions among all 
the inhabitants. That, I saw at once, involved consequences so anti-so- 
cial that it greatly cooled my admiration of him." 

Mr. Daunt observes that, except from O'Connell, he never heard of 
Arthur O'Connor's plan for the division of the land. He seems inclined 
to conjecture that it may, after all, have been a plan for a small allot- 
ment system, calculated to promote " the comfort of the humbler classes 
without encroaching upon the interests or rights of the landed aristoc- 
racy," involving, in short, no "anti-social results." 

We have seen O'Connell travelling with Harry Deane Grady, but in 
the earlier portion of his career he sometimes had far more distinguished 
fellow-travellers. He once travelled with the illustrious Curran in the 
Cork mail. At the period of this journey travellers by the mail reached 
Dublin from Cork in eight-and-forty hours. On this occasion there 
were six insides and unlimited outsides (in later times the number of 
passengers a mcwY-coach could carry was limited, if I remember rightly, 
to eight ; ordinary day-coaches were licensed to carry nineteen, but they 
often crowded more on the top of the luggage on the roof). The passen- 
gers got off the coach and walked two or three miles on the rising ground 
on the Dublin side of Clonmel. 

In the course of a conversation, in which the name of Arthur O'Con- 
nor chanced to turn up, that gentleman's celebrated letter to Lord Cas- 
tlereagh, written in 1798. was spoken of. " Do you know," said O'Con- 



26 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

nell to Mr. Daunt, "who got that letter printed? It was your friend, 
old Cornelius McLoughlin. He was walking past Kilmainham prison, 
and was hailed by Arthur O'Connor from a window. Arthur threw his 
manuscript out, saying, 'Will you do me the service of getting that 
printed?' 'If I find on perusal that it merits publication, I will,' 
said McLoughlin. 'Promise me positively!' 'No; but if I like the 
production I shall gladly bear the expense of printing it.' So saying, 
McLoughlin took it home, read, approved, and got it printed. For act- 
ing thus, Cornelius was brought before the select committee of the 
House of Commons. When asked who got the pamphlet printed, he 
boldly answered, ' It was I .' ' Why did you do so ?' ' Because I ap- 
proved of the principles contained in it.' Whereupon Castlereagh said, 
' That's a brave fellow ! We won't inflict any punishment upon him.' " 

Mr. Daunt, feeling somewhat surprised at this instance of lenity in 
Castlereagh, remarked that "he had not thought his lordship had so 
much good in him." 

" Oh," replied the Liberator, " he had a good deal of pluck, and liked 
spirit in others. Besides, at that period, as the Union was virtually car- 
ried, there did not exist any pressing occasion to shed innocent blood." 

O'Connell, contrasting the reputation for wit which the Irish bar 
enjoyed at the close of the eighteenth century with that which it pos- 
sessed at a much later period of his life, admitted, indeed, that in the 
more recent period the profession could boast no such wit as Curran, 
but that still it had within its ranks members largely endowed with the 
talent for provoking laughter. "Holmes," said he, "has a great share of 
very clever sarcasm. As for myself, to the last hour of my practice at 
the bar, I kept the court alternately in tears and in roars of laughter. 
Plunket had great wit. He was a creature of exquisite genius. Noth- 
ing could be happier than his hit in reply to Lord Eedesdale (Mitford, 
the historian of Greece 's br oilier — a dry Englishman sent over to be Irish 
chancellor) about the kites. In a speech before Eedesdale, Plunket had 
occasion to use the phrase ' kites ' very frequently, as designating fraud* 
ulent bills and promissory notes. Lord Eedesdale, to whom the phrase 
was quite new, at length interrupted him, saying, ' I don't quite under- 
stand your meaning, Mr. Plunket; in England kites are paper play- 
things used by boys ; in Ireland they seem to mean some monetary 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 27 

transaction.' 'There is another difference, my lord,' said Plunket; 
'in England the wind raises the kites; in Ireland the kites raise the 
wind? 

" Curran was once defending an attorney's bill of costs before Lord 
Clare [chancellor of Ireland, an infamous Irishman, who was mainly in- 
strumental in carrying the accursed act of Union that extinguished the 
legislative independence of his country). 'Here, now,' said Clare, 'is a 
flagitious imposition : how can you defend this item, Mr. Curran : "To 
writing innumerable letters, £100"?' 'Why, my lord,' said Curran, 
' nothing can be more reasonable. It is not a penny a letter V And Cur- 
ran' s reply to Judge Robinson is exquisite in its way. ' I'll commit you, 
sir,' said the judge. ' I hope you'll never commit a worse thing, my 
lord !' retorted Curran. 

"Wilson Croker, too, had humor. When the crier wanted to expel 
the dwarf O'Leary, who was about two feet four inches high, from the 
jury-box in Tralee, Croker said, ' Let him stay where he is— Zte minibus 
non curat lex.'' (About very small things the law cares not.) And when 
Tom Goold got retainers from both sides, ' Keep them both,' said Croker; 
' you may conscientiously do so. You can be counsel for one side, and 
of use to the other.' " 

It was probably during the early days of his professional life that 
O'Connell was about to write a novel. When asked what his story was 
to have been, he said, " Why, as to the story, I had not that fully deter- 
mined on. But my hero was to have been a natural son of George III. 
by Hannah Lightfoot, his Quaker mistress. The youth was to have been 
early taken from his mother,' and I meant to make him a student at 
Douay, and thence to bring him through various adventures to the West 
Indies. He was to be a soldier of fortune— to take part in the American 
war — and to come back finally to England imbued with republican 
principles." Mr. Daunt failed to remember clearly whether O'Connell 
intended that this young adventurer, on his return to his native land, 
should be confronted with the king his father. 

O'Connell was a zealous advocate of the beautiful and unfortunate 
Mary queen of Scots. This doughty champion was inclined to do des- 
perate battle for the honor of her name and memory in the teeth of all 
the charges and aspersions levelled and flung against her fair fame. In 



28 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

fact, he seems to have felt a glow of downright enthusiasm for the mem- 
ory of the hapless queen, and to have almost reverenced any relics of her 
still remaining. "I saw her manuscript," said he, "in the Advocates' 
Library at Edinburgh ; I kissed the writing and pressed it to my heart." 
This was rather a high-flown style of devotion or chivalry, to say the 
least. Few persons, in the present stage of the nineteenth century at 
all events, could be made to admire or even comprehend such a cherish- 
ing of royal souvenirs, and such a thorough devotion to those old if not 
obsolete feelings and sentiments of loyalty that were felt rather on 
account of the associations hanging around a dynasty than on account 
of the sovereign's own sterling merits. This extreme admiration of 
Mary queen of Scots formed, no doubt, a large part of the romance of our 
hero's more youthful days. 

But his heart and imagination could not for any length of time 
remain contented with a mere ideal romance, in which the ill-starred 
and beautiful Scottish queen of the sixteenth century should reign as 
the sole heroine. His soul now began to long for an object of love and 
devotion having more touch of reality than the melancholy historic or 
poetic phantoms of the past. And soon these cravings of his whole being 
were more than satisfied, for his fair cousin, Mary O'Connell, glided 
before him a most "delightful vision" — real, indeed, yet idealized too 
by his own enamored fancy, and made all-radiant by the "purple light 
of love." The dreams and longings of both are indeed more than real- 
ized. Youth's magic power carries them for a time far away from " dull 
earth," and they wander blissfully hand in hand through regions of 
delicious enchantment. O'Connell himself gives us a glimpse of the 
supreme moment of happiness in this the love-romance of his life. " I 
never," he says, "proposed marriage to any woman but one — my Mary. 
I said to her, 'Are you engaged, Miss O'Connell?' She answered, 'I am 
not.' 'Then,' said I, 'will you engage yourself to me?' 'I will,' was 
her reply. And I said I would devote my life to make her happy. She 
deserved that I should : she gave me thirty-four years of the purest hap- 
piness that man ever enjoyed. My uncle was desirous I should obtain 
a much larger fortune, and I thought he would disinherit me. But I 
did not care for that. I was richly rewarded by subsequent happiness." 
Had his uncle and other relatives, who were indignant at the match, not 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 29 

relented, his profession would, even from the outset, have sufficed to make 
him independent. 

The lovers were privately married on the 23d of June, 1802, in Dame 
street, Dublin, at the lodgings of Mr. James Connor, the lady's brother- 
in-law. The bride was the daughter of a physician in Tralee, who was 
indeed skilful in his profession, but not sufficiently rich to give a mar- 
riage-portion with his daughter. This it was which caused the resent- 
ment of O'ConnelTs family when they came to know of the marriage, 
for it was kept secret for several months. The Reverend Mr. Finn, then 
parish priest of Irishtown, was the clergyman who pronounced the nup- 
tial benediction. 

The young wife resided in Tralee with her grandmother. It used to 
be O'ConnelTs delight to quiz the old lady by pretending to complain of 
her granddaughter's want of temper. "Madam," he would say "Mary 
would do very well, only she is so cross." 

" Cross, sir ?" the old lady would hastily reply, in the greatest state 
of amazement and vexation. "My Mary cross? Sir, you must have 
provoked her very much. Sir, you must yourself be quite in fault. Sir, 
my little girl was always the gentlest, sweetest creature born !" 

" And so she was," O'Connell would exclaim, when recalling in after 
days these tender passages of his early wedded life. "She had the 
sweetest, the most heavenly temper, and the sweetest breath." 

O'Connell used to tell this anecdote of his wife's days of childhood : 
"When my wife was a little girl she was obliged to pass, on her way to 
school every day, under the arch of the jail, and Hands, the jailer of 
Tralee, a most gruff, uncouth-looking fellow, always made her stop and 
courtesy to him. She despatched the courtesy with all imaginable expe- 
dition, and ran away to school to get out of his sight as fast as possible." 

Here is a specimen of O'ConnelTs style of responding to a toast given 
in honor of Mrs. O'Connell: "There are some topics of so sacred and 
sweet a nature that they may be comprehended by those who are happy, 
but cannot possibly be described by any human being. All that I shall 
do is to thank you in the name of her who was the disinterested choice 
of my youth, and who was the ever-cheerful companion of my manly 
years. In her name I thank you. And this you may readily believe — 
for experience, I think, will show to us all that a man cannot battle and 



30 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

struggle with trie malignant enemies of his country unless his nest at 
home is warm and comfortable — unless the honey of human life is com- 
mended by a hand he loves." 

With the above contrast the following passage, which was delivered 
at a temperance soiree that was given to him in Belfast, in the year 1841, 
by four hundred and fifty ladies of various religious sects. It was re- 
ported in " The Belfast Vindicator " of the 20th of January, 1841 : "But 
that subject brings me back to a being of whom I dare not speak in the 
profanation of words. No, I will not mention that name. The man 
who is happiest in his domestic circle may have some idea of what my 
happiness was. Tes, I was her husband then. Did I say was? Oh, 
yes ! I am her husband still. The grave may separate us for a time, but 
we shall meet again beyond it, never, I trust, to be separated more." 

Mr. Fagan tells us in his life of O'Connell that Mrs. O'Connell was 
an exceedingly amiable, strong-minded woman; and Mr. O'Connell, it 
was said, was, during her life, very much guided by her advice. 

Perhaps it may not be out of place here to give some curious remarks 
of O'Connell on the subject of courtship. Speaking one day of the assi- 
duities of a friend (I believe Tom Steele) to a certain widow, he ob- 
served : " One blunder the fellow made was, that he asked her to marry 
him at far too early a period of the courtship. This was highly injudi- 
cious. JSTow, by this precipitation he lost the advantage which female 
curiosity would have otherwise given him. He might have been tender 
and assiduous, but he should not have declared himself until after he 
had rendered her considerably curious as to whether he would propose 
for her or not. This would have created, at #11 events, an interest about 
him. 

" Then, again, as to his telling her that he was confident of brilliant 
political distinction, and holding out as a lure that she would be the 
sharer of his honors — it showed great want of tact, great want of know- 
ledge of human nature. If he had tact he would have said, ' I am open- 
ing a career of ambition ; perhaps I overrate my prospects of success in 
public life ; but there is one thing which I deeply feel would essentially 
contribute to it, and that is domestic felicity.' He should have spoken 
this with a tender earnestness, and left her to conjecture his meaning. 
But instead of thus delicately feeling his way, the fellow blurted out his 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 31 



trashy brag of successful ambition and fame and his offer of marriage 
all at once. Then as to the raptures — why every woman past girlhood 
laughs at raptures ! had fine opportunities, only that the block- 
head didn't know how to make use of them." 

It is probable that the fact of his being obliged, owing to the hostility 
of his uncle and other near relations to this marriage with an undowered 
bride, to trust for a time to his own exertions, had the most salutary 
effect upon his future fortunes. All the vast energies of his being were 
aroused that he might be able the better to place his beloved one in 
such a position as he believed she merited and was fitted to adorn. 
From this time forward he became every day more and more conspicuous 
among the public men of his own country for his marvellous industry 
and activity, his broad views and mastery of details, his amazing fertility 
of resources. Indeed, in these qualities he was inferior to the public 
men of no country in the world. Ere long it became quite evident that 
he was destined to succeed equally in his professional career and in 
political life. 

I remember once hearing or reading an account of some rich indi- 
vidual who went to Lord Chief-justice Kenyon, I believe, to ask him as 
a friend what were likely to be the chances of his son at the bar. The 
chief-justice made the following reply: " Sir, your son must spend his for- 
tune; let him marry and spend his wife's ; and then he may be expected 
to apply in earnest." In " Curran's Life," too, we find that he attributes 
his success to the fact of his being left without a shilling. " C'est des dif- 
ficulUs qui naissent les miracles." (" It is difficulties which give birth to 
miracles.") 

Bather different was the advice given, some years ago, by one of the 
senior fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, who was a lay-fellow and a bar- 
rister, to a friend who came to consult him about the law-books his son 
should study in order to secure success at the bar. "Books!" cries the 
old fellow. " Oh, don't trouble yourself about books. Let your son go to 
a shooting-gallery and practice pistol-shooting for two hours every day 
for a year. That's the way to rise at the bar in Ireland." The old gen- 
tleman had been living a secluded life for at least a score of years. In his 
learned retreat he had failed to observe the changes that had taken place 
in Ireland, both in society in general and forensic training in particular. 



32 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
f ■ 

He imagined that the age of Irish duelling, when all questions were liable 
to be decided by the arbitrament of the pistol, had not yet passed away 
— that rising lawyers might still be able to boast, like the sanguinary 
Toler, that they owed their success in life to the parental present of a 
pair of good duelling-pistols and the skill and courage requisite to make 
good use of them on any and every possible occasion. He had not, good, 
easy old man, the remotest idea that it had come to pass at length that 
it was of far more importance, even in Ireland, for the aspirant after 
forensic distinction to be master of the contents of dry and crabbed tomes 
of legal lore than to be the most formidable "crack shot" of the day. 
He was blissfully ignorant, in short, of the important fact that his life 
had glided on into a dull prosaic age, when even the fate of Irish elec- 
tions was wont to be decided without the occurrence of a single "affair 
of honor " between either the rival candidates or their counsel or any of 
their supporters, and when a man might become the most prominent of 
Irish politicians without having once in his whole life pulled a hair- 
trigger in anger. 

To return to O'Connell. Perhaps if at this period of his life he had 
seen before him the certainty of affluence independent of his own exer- 
tions, he might have sunk into ignoble sloth. Something like this hap- 
pened in the case of a talented barrister named Collis, with whom our 
hero was intimate during the early portion of his career at the bar. This 
Collis, in 1800, wrote an anti-union pamphlet, in which he predicted that 
the ruin of Ireland would result from that baleful measure. Afterwards, 
in 1826, he insisted that things had turned out just as he had foretold. 
O'Connell, in speaking of Collis, described him as " a clever fellow. He 
had talent enough to have made a figure at the bar if it had not been 
for the indolence induced by his comfortable property. His wife was a 
Miss Kashleigh, an uncommonly beautiful woman. He and I went cir- 
cuit together. Going down to the Munster circuit by the Tullamore 
boat, we amused ourselves on deck firing pistols at the elms along the 
canal. There was a small party of soldiers on board, and one of them 
authoritatively desired us to stop our firing. 

" ' Ah, corporal, don't be so cruel/ said Collis, still firing away. 

" ' Are you a corporal ?' asked I. He surlily replied in the affirmative. 

" 'Then, friend,' said I, 'you must have got yourself reduced to the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'UONNELL. 33 

ranks by misconduct, for I don't see the Y's upon your sleeve.' This 
raised a laugh at his expense, and he slunk off to the stern quite chap- 
fallen." 

On the occasion of this Counsellor Collis's marriage with the beau- 
tiful and rich co-heiress, Miss Rashleigh, the perpetrators of puns were 
guilty of an indifferent one enough. They said "that he had been a 
long time thinking of marrying, and at last he married ' Rasldeigli! " 

Among O'Connell's earlier contemporaries was a young barrister who 
on one occasion was retained as counsel against a cow-stealer. He burst 
into a vehement denunciation of the rogue, who had branded his own 
name on the horns of the stolen cow. The closing words of the perora- 
tion of the advocate's harangue were a singularly happy instance of un- 
conscious burlesque: "If, my lord, the cow were a cow of any feeling, 
how could she bear to have such a name branded on her horns?" 

It was Bully Egan, I believe, who in those days uttered a sentence of 
magnificently-audacious nonsense that can hardly be paralleled, not to 
say surpassed, even in the speeches of our old friend, "Mine Ancient 
Pistol." Interrupted on some occasion or other by one of the opposing 
counsel, who happened to have black eyebrows and a hot temper, Egan 
turned on him with a glare of theatric fierceness and exclaimed, "I 
would have my learned friend to know that, in the fulfilment of my 
sacred duty to my client, I am not the man to be intimidated by the 
dark oblivion of a brow." " Egan," whispered one of his colleagues 
beside him, eagerly plucking at his gown, " what the devil do you mean ? 
Sure, that's infernal nonsense you're talking." " I know it is," says 
Egan, answering the " aside " speech of his friend in another of the sub- 
limest effrontery, "but it is good enough for a jury!" 

Some of my readers will be astonished to learn that Daniel O'Con- 
nell became a member of the society of Free and Accepted Masons in 
the year 1799. His lodge met in Dublin, and consisted of one hundred 
and eighty-nine members. O'Connell was, it appears, master of the 
lodge. He writes thus about this passage of his life : " It is true, I was 
a Freemason and master of a lodge. It was at a very early period of 
my life, and either before an ecclesiastical censure had been published 
in the Catholic Church in Ireland prohibiting the taking of the Masonic 
oaths, or at least before I was aware of that censure. Freemasonry in 



34 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Ireland may be said to have (apart from its oaths) no evil tendency, 
save so far as it may counteract the exertions of those most laudable 
and useful institutions, the temperance societies. The important objec- 
tion is the profane taking in vain the awful name of the Deity in the 
wanton and multiplied oaths — oaths administered on the book of God — 
without any adequate motive." 

Of course O'Connell after a time left the Masonic body. A Mason, 
speaking of this withdrawal, uses language which is another fine speci- 
men of unconscious burlesque: "A dark hour came upon him, and he 
shunned the light." 

The following entertaining piece of autobiography is given by Mr. 
O'Neill Daunt in page 148 of the second volume of his amusing " Per- 
sonal Eecollections of O'Connell." 

" In the winter of 1801," said O'Connell, " I had been supping at the 
Freemasons' Hotel, at the corner of Golden lane, with a jovial party. 
"We were returning home late, after having drunk a good stoup of claret, 
when a fire broke out in a timber-yard and spread rapidly. I was pro- 
voked at the awkwardness of a fellow who was beating the ground with a 
pickaxe, but making no progress in getting at the water-pipes. I shoul- 
dered him away, seized the pickaxe, and soon got at the plug; but, 
instead of stopping then, I kept working away con amove, and would soon 
have disturbed the paving-stones all over the street if I had not been 
prevented. There was a large crowd. Sheriff Macready (an old auc- 
tioneer) kept order, with the aid of a party of the Buckinghamshire 
militia. I was rather an unruly customer, being a little under the influ- 
ence of a good batch of claret, and on my refusing to desist from pick- 
ing up the street one of the soldiers ran a bayonet at me, which was 
intercepted by the cover of my hunting- watch. If I had not had the 
watch, there was an end of the Agitator." 

"Yes," said Mr. Daunt, after he had listened to the Liberator's rela- 
tion of this anecdote, "but Ireland would have had other agitators. A 
country so aggrieved could not have lacked patriot leaders, though they 
might not have agitated prudently or wisely." 

"Wisely!" echoed O'Connell. "Why, when I took the helm I found 
all the Catholics full of mutual jealousies ; one man trying to outrival 
another ; one meeting rivalling another ; the leaders watching to sell 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 35 

themselves at the highest penny. sold himself. "Woulfe sold him- 
self — sold himself, and no doubt at a marvellous price." 

O'Connell, long after he got to the head of Irish affairs, remarked to 
a Father Barry of Clare, on that gentleman's expressing surprise at the 
appointment to office of certain place-hunters, who, to judge from their 
utter insignificance, were miserable bargains for the British government 
to think of buying: "My dear friend, you have no idea what carrion 
finds a ready sale in the markets of corruption." 

As you travel from Killarney to Milstreet, on the left-hand side of 
the road stands the farm of Lisnababie. Pointing this out to a friend, 
O'Connell once exclaimed, " I may say with honest pride that I was a 
good help to keep that farm in the hands of its rightful owner, Lalor of 
Killarney. I was yet very young at the bar when Jerry Connor (the 
attorney concerned for Lalor) gave me two ten-guinea fees in the Lisna- 
babie case. Lalor remonstrated with Connor, stating that the latter had 
no right to pay so expensive a compliment out of his money to so young 
a barrister. This was at a very early period of the cause, which was 
tried in Dublin before Sir Michael Smith ; but a motion being made in 
court to dismiss Lalor' s bill, I rose and combated it so successfully that 
Sir Michael Smith particularly complimented me ; and Lalor wrote to 
Jerry Connor, saying that I gave him the full worth of his money, and 
desiring (what indeed was a matter of course) that I should be retained 
for the assizes. We were finally successful, and I had the chief share in 
the triumph." 

O'Connell received a whimsical compliment from a client a few 
months after he commenced practising at the bar. After our hero had 
succeeded in obtaining his acquittal, the fellow took the first opportu- 
nity of saying to him with great enthusiasm, " I have no way here to 
show your honor my gratitude, but I wish to God I saw you knocked 
down in my own parish, and maybe I wouldn't bring a faction to res- 
cue you! Whoop! Long life to your honor!" O'Connell was, it may 
easily be believed, immensely amused at this singular demonstration 
of gratitude. 

I shall conclude this chapter with a curious story told by O'Connell, 
which presents a vivid picture of the corruption which polluted the judi- 
cial bench towards the close of the last century. O'Connell, on one of 



36 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

his political tours, after breakfasting at Fermoy in the county Cork, was 
passing the bridge at Moorepark. He said to his friend, Mr. Daunt, " There 
is a story connected with this place which shows how the law was ad- 
ministered in Ireland some seventy or eighty years ago. I think Lord 
Annaly was the judge who figured in it, but as I am not quite sure, I don't 
like to attach a discreditable tale to his name without stating my uncer- 
tainty on this point. He was coming to the Cork assizes, where he was 
to try a heavy record involving the right of a gentleman named Nagle 
to a large estate. This bridge did not then exist, and the road descend- 
ing to the ford was of course a great deal steeper than it is at present, 
and you see it is bad enough now. The judge's carriage was encoun- 
tered in the stream by a large drove of bullocks, and considerable delay 
arose to his progress from the crowded and unruly animals. He bore it 
in silence for a few minutes, but at length, impatient of the continued 
impediment, he angrily called out to the driver of the herd, 'Halloo, 
friend! make way there at once. How dare you stop me?' 'I can't 
help it, sir,' returned the bullock-driver; 'I'm obeying the orders of 

my master, Mr. Nagle, who ordhered me to drive these beasts to ' 

(naming Lord Annaly' s residence in another county). On this announce- 
ment his lordship's ire softened down considerably. He inquired who 
Mr. Nagle, the owner of the bullocks, was, and having satisfied himself 
that the drove were intended by that gentleman as a douceur for his 
lordship previously to the pending trial, he awaited the clearance of the 
passage in philosophic silence. When the trial came on he took excel- 
lent care to secure a verdict in favor of Nagle. On his return to his own 
abode after the circuit had closed, the first question he asked was, 
' Where the drove of bullocks were ?' But bullocks, alas ! there were 
none! JSTagle had fairly bit the judge. The fact was, that his cause 
had been disposed of at an early period of the Cork assizes, and seeing 
no utility in giving away his bullocks for a verdict which was now 
secured, he despatched an express, who overtook the drover within six 
miles of the judge's residence, and ordered him to countermarch. Here 
is another story for you : The noted Denis O'Brien had a record at Ne- 
nagh ; the judge had talked of purchasing a set of carriage-horses, and 
Denis accordingly sent him a magnificent set, hoping they would answer 
his lordship, etc., etc. The judge graciously accepted the horses and 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 37 



praised their points extravagantly, and, what was more important for 
Denis, he charged the jury in his favor and obtained a verdict for him. 
The instant Denis gained his point he sent in a bill to the judge for the 
full value of the horses. His lordship called Denis aside to expostulate 
privately with him. 'Oh, Mr. O'Brien,' said he, 'I did not think you 
meant to charge me for those horses. Come now, my dear friend, why 
should I pay you for them?' 'Upon my word that's curious talk,' re- 
torted Denis in a tone of defiance ; ' I'd like to know why your lord- 
ship should not pay me for them ?' To this inquiry of course a reply 
was impossible; all the judge had for it was to hold his peace and 
pay the money." * 

* The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the above chapter are O'Neill 
Daunt's "Personal Recollections," Fagan's "Life of O'Connell," Mitchel's "Continuation of Mac- 
Geoghegan," " Curran's Life," by his son, " Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone," " Select Speechai 
of O'Connell, with Historical Notices." by his son John. etc. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Theobald Wolfe Tone and the "United Irishmen" — Peep-o'-Da* Boys and Defend- 
ers — Orange atrocities— Tone in Bantry Bay — Injustice and tyranny of Lord 
Camden's government — Secession of Grattan and his friends from the House of 
Commons — O'Connell's comments on this step — The Texel expedition — Arrests at 
Bond's house — Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald^Rebellion of '98 horrors — 
John P. Curran defends the United Irishmen — Death of Wolfe Tone and others 
— The Union — Clare and Castlereagh — Daniel O'Connell's first appearance on 

THE POLITICAL STAGE AS AN ORATOR — HlS AnTI-UnION SPEECH — HENRY GrATTAN's SUD- 
DEN REAPPEARANCE IN PARLIAMENT? — HlS FIERCE INVECTIVE AGAINST CORRY — DUEL BE- 
TWEEN Grattan and Corry — Grattan's Anti-Union speeches — The Union carried — 
Insurrection of 1803— Robert Emmett's. speech in the dock — His execution — O'Con- 
nell's opinion of Emmett's attempt. 

TIRING the year in which Daniel O'Connell was called to the 
bar an historical event, in itself most serious and attended with 
^wi^ momentous consequences to the people of Ireland, took place. 
This was the rebellion of '98, of which it is necessary to say some- 
thing here. So early as the end of 1791 the first club of " Uni- 
ted Irishmen" was founded in Belfast by the celebrated Theobald Wolfe 
Tone. Soon, however, so many prominent men came forward to occupy 
the leading positions that he was completely in the shade for a time. 
This, of course, pleased him, as he was a thoroughly earnest and single- 
minded man, "My object," he says, "was to secure the independence 
of my countiy under any form of government, to which I was led by a 
hatred of England so deeply rooted in my nature that it was rather an 
instinct than a principle. I left to others better qualified for the inquiry 
the investigation and merits of the different forms of government, and 1 
contented myself with laboring on my own system, which was luckily 
in perfect coincidence as to its operation with that of those men who 
viewed the question on a broader and juster scale than I did at the time 
I mention." Indeed, the professed objects of the society did not at that 
period go the length even of national independence. The opening sen- 
tence of the constitution of the first club at Belfast is very moderate in 
its language : "1st. This society is constituted for the purpose of for- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 39 

warding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights and a union 
of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and thereby to 
obtain a complete reform in the legislature, founded on the principles of 
civil, political and religious liberty." But ere long the principles of the 
French Revolution began gradually to influence and carry the members 
of the society beyond the limits within which they were originally con- 
fined. The government, too, began to persecute the association. In 
January, 1794, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, a prominent member, was 
convicted of sedition by a packed jury. Their place of meeting, at the 
Taylors' Hall, in Buck lane, was shortly after invaded by the police, the 
meeting dispersed and their papers seized. The timid now fell off, but 
the determined members of the society resolved on reorganizing it on a 
bolder and more revolutionary basis. Other prosecutions were menaced. 
Indeed, the Reverend William Jackson, an emissary from France, w T as 
convicted on the testimony of the informer Cockayne, but avoided a pub- 
lic execution by committing suicide in the dock. He had furnished him- 
self with arsenic for the purpose. His dving words, addressed to his advo- 
cate, were those spoken by the chief conspirator Pierre to his friend Jaf- 
fier in the tragedy of " Venice Preserved," when the latter stabs Pierre to 
save him from being broken on the wheel : "We have deceived the senate !" 
Tone had to quit the country to avoid a similar conviction on Cock- 
ayne's testimony. Hamilton Rowan, who was also liable to a fresh 
prosecution (this time for high treason), to be sustained by the evidence 
of the same informer, contrived to escape from Newgate and to reach 
France, whence he subsequently proceeded to America. Other causes 
tended to inflame the people besides those I have mentioned. In '95 
Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over as viceroy on the understanding that 
complete Catholic emancipation was to be made a government measure. 
The hopes of the people were high. Grattan was prepared to support 
the new lord-lieutenant in his beneficent measures ; other patriots were 
to accept office in order to be in a better position to assist in carrying 
them through. Probably, if the policy of Lord Fitzwilliam had taken 
effect, the people would have been satisfied and the rebellion of '98 
might never have occurred. But all these ardent hopes that had been 
raised in the minds of the people were doomed to bitter disappointment. 
The partisans of the faction of Ascendency began to tremble for their 



40 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

places and influence when they saw Mr. Beresford — one of their most 
prominent men and a member of one of the most powerful Protestant 
houses — dismissed by Lord Fitzwilliam from his post of commissioner of 
the revenue. Beresford complained to Mr. Pitt, and even to the king him- 
self, not without effect. It is said, too, that Pitt, England's prime min- 
ister, even wished to see Ireland plunged in rebellion, that he might the 
more easily accomplish a legislative union between the two countries. 
Be this as it may, Lord Fitzwilliam was speedily recalled. The Catholic 
Eelief Bill, that had been brought forward by Henry Grattan with every 
prospect of success, fell to the ground, and was no more heard of till 1829. 
It is in no degree surprising that the people of Ireland, seeing their 
expectations thus dashed to earth, should every day, from this time for- 
ward, put more and more faith in French ideas, and begin to look to rev- 
olution as the only likely method of achieving emancipation and reform. 
Indeed, French principles were in those days more or less disseminated 
in almost every part of Europe. Even in England itself several soci- 
eties modelled on the revolutionary pattern had sprung up from time 
to time. The Protestants and Catholics of Ireland were fast becoming 
united in the cause of their country's independence. However, it must 
be owned that this brotherly feeling was by no means universal. A 
set of wretches called by the several names of "Peep-of-Day Boys," 
"Wreckers" or "Protestant Boys," who were afterwards developed into 
the too famous or notorious "Orange Society," had come into existence 
in the JSTorth of Ireland some few years before. Their main article of 
belief was the lawfulness, and even desirableness, of exterminating "pa- 
pists." Their fanaticism was spurred on in 1795 by agents of the place- 
holding gentry to increased hostility to the Catholics. Those in place and 
power at that time naturally feared the union of Irishmen, and tried 
hard to prevent or break it up. It was in '95 that the "Peep-of-Day 
Boys " assumed the name of Orangemen. Mr. Thomas Verner was the first 
grand-master. Their form of oath is said to have been: "In the awful 
presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., do solemnly swear that I will, to the 
utmost of my power, support the king and the present government ; and 
I do further swear that I will use my utmost exertions to exterminate 
all the Catholics of the kingdom of Ireland." To protect themselves 
against the hostility of the "Peep-of-Day Boys," the Catholics in the 




JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 41 

North had formed an association called the " Defenders." The two hos- 
tile bodies came into sanguinary collision at the village of the Diamond, 
in the county Armagh, on the 21st of September, 1795. This is the en- 
counter known as "the Battle of the Diamond." The Catholics, who 
were almost totally unarmed, were, as might be expected, defeated by 
the Orangemen, who had abundance of weapons and were sure of mag- 
isterial protection to boot. A few Defenders were killed and several 
more were wounded. This miserable and shameful affair, magnilo- 
quently styled by the Orangemen a battle, has been boastfully toasted 
at their drunken orgies and celebrated in doggerel ballads, the sanguin- 
ary spirit of which is disgraceful not merely to the Orange Society, but 
to human nature itself. 

The Orangemen after this contemptible skirmish gave full scope to 
their fury. They commenced a persecution of the northern Catholics 
which was perfectly fiendish. Thomas Addis Emmett, in his " Pieces of 
Irish History," tells us that "they posted up on the cabins of these un- 
fortunate victims this pithy notice, ' To Hell or Connaught,' and appointed 
a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property 
was to be made. If after the expiration of that period the notice had 
not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furni- 
ture, burned the habitations and forced the ruined families to fly else- 
where for shelter." The magistrates seemed more inclined to help than 
to oppose these outrages. Dr. E. E. Madden, the author of "The Lives 
of the United Irishmen," has preserved and printed many of the ill- 
spelled notices that were affixed to the cabin doors. The Orangemen 
also indulged in the exciting pastime of committing fearful murders ; but 
in the year 1796 they surpassed themselves. It is calculated that in 
that year not less than seven thousand of the unresisting Catholics were 
either slain or expelled from their homes in the one small county of Ar- 
magh. These wretched outcasts had no place of shelter to fly to. They 
wandered about the mountains — some died, others were lodged in prison. 
The younger men, in pursuance of a suggestion of the Irish commander- 
in-chief, Lord Carhampton, were unceremoniously packed off to one or 
other of the seaports, placed on board a tender and thence finally drafted 
on board an English man-of-war. This outraging of all law and justice 
was, by a delicate euphemism, styled "a vigor beyond the law." Lein- 



42 THE # LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ster and Munster, as well as "Ulster, were under a sort of reign of terror 
this year. Arbitrary arrests and imprisonments occurred every day. We 
can learn even from that rabid partisan of the Protestant Ascendency, 
Sir Kichard Musgrave, how the Catholic peasantry were treated by Lord 
Carhampton and the squirearchy : " In each county he (Lord Carhamp- 
ton) assembled the most respectable gentlemen and landholders in it, 
and having in concert with them examined the charges against the lead- 
ers of this banditti (the Catholic peasantry) who were in prison, but defied 
justice, he, with the concurrence of these gentlemen, sent the most nefa- 
rious of them on board a tender stationed at Sligo to serve in His Ma- 
jesty's navy."' Is it any way wonderful that every day the masses of 
the Catholics became more and more disaffected towards the king's gov- 
ernment, that connived at and tolerated, if it did not actually prompt, 
these atrocities of the Orange brigands and of Lord Carhampton and 
the squirearchy ? Or is it any wonder that the people so hunted and tor- 
tured should begin to long for a complete separation of the two islands, 
which would necessarily place them on an equal footing with their Prot- 
estant countrymen ? 

The tyranny went on. Lord Camden, the new viceroy, called for laws 
against dangerous secret societies. An insurrection act was passed 
against " The Defenders," An act of indemnity was passed to indem- 
nify magistrates and officers of the army against the consequences of any 
of their illegal and unconstitutional outrages upon the Catholics. But no 
bill was passed against the Orange banditti, who were the real distuib- 
ers of the peace and well-being of the country. Mr. Grattan denounced 
this gross partiality of the government in his usual splendid style of 
eloquence. He then showed that the Orangemen had robbed, massacred 
and endeavored to exterminate the Catholics ; that these lawless brigands 
had, in point of fact, "repealed by their own authority all the laws 
recently passed in favor of the Catholics;" that they had established 
instead "the inquisition of a mob, resembling Lord George Gordon's 
fanatics, equalling them in outrage, and surpassing them far in perse- 
verance and success." He denounced the system of terror they had 
established ; masters, by intimidation, were forced to dismiss their Cath- 
olic servants ; landlords, to eject their Catholic tenantry. Catholic wea- 
vers were illegally seized as deserters by these " Orange boys or Protest- 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 43 

ant boys — that is, a banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the 
name of God and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty." 
The alleged deserters were sometimes tried by a set called "the Commit- 
tee of Elders;" if the accused gave this expeditious tribunal liquor 01 
money, he might be discharged ; if he failed to offer them either money 
or a bottle, the thirsty elders would send him " to a recruiting officer as 
a deserter." The notices to quit served by the Orangemen on the Cath- 
olics were generally in words short but plain: "Go to Hell, Connaught 
won't receive you — fire and faggot. WillTresham and John Thrustout." 
Shortly after giving such a notice they would pay a visit to the house of 
the poor Catholic, rob or destroy his property, and force him to leave 
home and everything with his miserable family and take refuge in vil- 
lages. " In many instances this banditti of persecution threw down the 
houses of the tenantry, or what they called racked the house, so that the 
family must fly or be buried in the grave of their own cabin." Murders 
of Catholics had been of frequent occurrence. In fact, "the Catholic 
inhabitants of Armagh had been actually put out of the protection of the 
law. The magistrates were supine or partial." To this supineness the 
success of the brigands was owing. At last, the evil of these disorders 
went to so shameful an excess that the magistrates felt obliged "to cry 
out against it." Thirty of them, in a resolution, declared that the Roman 
Catholic inhabitants of Armagh "are grievously oppressed by lawless 
persons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night and 
threaten them with instant destruction unless they abandon immediately 
their lands and habitations." 

Mr. Grattan's speeches, Mr. Mitchel says, " more than any records or 
documents, illustrate this period of the history of his country." Here is 
Grattan's commentary on "the Indemnity Act," passed early in 1796 
along with "the Insurrection Act:" "A bill of indemnity went to secure 
the offending magistrates against the consequences of their outrages and 
illegalities — that is to say, in our humble conception, the poor were 
stricken out of the protection of the law and the rich out of its penalties ; 
and then another bill was passed to give such lawless proceedings against 
His Majesty's subjects continuation — namely, a bill to enable the magis- 
trates to perpetrate by law those offences which they had before com- 
mitted against it — a bill to legalize outrage, to barbarize law and to give 



44 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



the law itself the cast and color of outrage. By such a bill the magis- 
trates were enabled, without legal process, to send on board a tender 
His Majesty's subjects, and the country was divided into two classes, or 
formed into two distinct nations, living under the same king and inhab^ 
iting the same island — one consisting of the king's magistrates and the 
other of the king's subjects — the former without restraint and the latter 
without privilege." 

ISTo wonder that the " United Irish Society " continued to live and 
flourish and multiply. I may here observe that the " Irish Eevolution- 
aiy Brotherhood" in Ireland, commonly but incorrectly called the "Fe- 
nian Organization " (the " Fenian Brotherhood " was, in reality, merely 
an American-Irish society affiliated with the home or purely Irish move- 
ment ; originally, indeed, it was a subordinate branch of the home move- 
ment"), — the "Irish Eevolutionary Brotherhood," I say, seems to be in 
our own days the legitimate successor of the society of " United Irish- 
men " in '98. Mr. Mitchel is certainly mistaken in the following pas- 
sage of his "Continuation of MacGeoghegan :" "The 'Whiteboy' organ- 
ization, which was itself the legitimate offspring of the ' Eapparees,' and 
which in its turn has given birth to 'Eibbonism,' to the 'Terry alts,' and 
finally to the ' Fenians.' The principle and meaning of all these various 
forms of secret Irish organization has been the same at all times," etc. 
It is not so ; Mr. Mitchel is here astray. The " Irish Eevolutionary 
Brotherhood" and the "Fenian Brotherhood" have no special resem- 
blance to any of the other organizations mentioned by Mr. Mitchel, which 
were all for the most part agrarian, and even local. The " Eibbon " so- 
ciety has a sectarian element also, but, like the " Whiteboy s" and "Ter- 
ry alts," it has little or nothing, properly speaking, of a political or revo- 
lutionary complexion ; whereas, both the " Irish Eevolutionary Brother- 
hood" and the " Fenian Brotherhood " are unsectarian and purely political 
and revolutionary, precisely like the " United Irishmen " of '98. Possibly, 
certain individual acts of members of the three last-named bodies may 
have a slight resemblance to some of the deeds of the " Whiteboy s" or 
'' Eibbonmen," but such exceptional cases, assuming that there are such, 
cannot in the slightest degree affect the general political and revolution- 
ary character of either the " Irish Eevolutionary Brotherhood," the "Fen- 
ian Brotherhood " or the society of the " United Irishmen " of '98. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL,. 45 

Still, England was not secure yet : a rebellion in Ireland had become 
almost inevitable. During the whole of the year 1796 the government 
acted as if their sole object had been to drive the people of Ireland 
to despair. Armagh was covered with the ruined homes of the poor 
Catholics. Thousands of victims of all ages and of both sexes were 
houseless, starving wanderers. Though the grand jury of that county 
talked at length of justice and impartiality, nothing but injustice pre- 
vailed. A venal press defended all the iniquitous acts of the govern- 
ment and their accomplices, the Orange banditti. A hireling print 
called Faulkner's Journal applauded to the skies all the bloody and law- 
less deeds of this league of blind besotted bigots, who were wont to sally 
forth on excursions of cold-blooded murder and mutilation, or even to 
burn whole hamlets. While Faulkner's Journal was doing this base 
work for government pay, The Northern Star, an able and patriotic Bel- 
fast journal, was suppressed, like the patriotic papers of '48 and The 
Irish People in these latter days, by military violence; its office was 
ransacked ; Samuel Neilson, the editor, and several others were arrested, 
brought to Dublin, cast into prison and kept there for more than a year 
without trial. In vain Grattan lifted his voice to demand justice, and 
that such laws should be enacted as would "ensure to all His Majesty's 
subjects the blessings and privileges of the constitution without any 
distinction of religion." In vain the eloquent and patriotic Curran 
demanded that evidence should be heard at the bar of the Commons, 
which would satisfy the House that not less than fourteen hundred fam- 
ilies had been barbarously driven in open day from house and home to 
wander miserable outcasts about the neighboring counties. Some, in- 
deed, had been butchered or burned in their cabins ; fatigue and famine 
had ended the sufferings of others. This was the substance of Curran 's 
testimony. But the voice of an angel would have failed to move the fell 
government of Lord Camden or the corrupted legislature that sustained 
and abetted him in his tyranny. Had not the Parliament suspended 
the habeas corpus act this session, thereby placing outside the pale of 
the constitution near nine-tenths of the nation ? 

When Parliament met again, in January, '97, the patriotic party in 
the Commons were most anxious to have a permanent popular force for 
the defence of the country. Sir Lawrence Parsons and Grattan strug- 



46 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNELL. 

gled hard for another people's army. The government opposed them 
violently. The patriotic motion of Sir Lawrence was of course lost — 
only 25 voting for it, while 125 voted against it. 

During December '96, and the early months of '97, several districts 
of Ulster were proclaimed under the insurrection act. The terrible reign 
of martial law had commenced. General Lake was dragooning the peo- 
ple. Vainly Grattan uttered eloquent protests in behalf of justice and 
reform, and maintained that the government severities only increased 
the influence of the " United Irishmen." He concluded his speech and 
the debate thus : ""We have offered you our measure ; you will reject it. 
We deprecate yours ; you will persevere. Having no hopes left to per- 
suade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you 
no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons." 
Filled with despair of effecting any further good for their country in 
that corrupt and venal assembly, Grattan and Lord Henry Fitzgerald 
refused to allow themselves to be re-elected for Dublin at the next gen- 
eral election. Curran, Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
adopted a similar course. When Tone heard of this secession, he ob- 
served in his journal: " I see those illustrious patriots are at last forced 
to bolt out of the House of Commons and come amongst the people, as 
John Keogh advised Grattan to do long since." Arthur O'Connor and 
Lord Edward, indeed, speedily joined the " United Irishmen ;" but Grat- 
tan, Curran and Lord Henry Fitzgerald kept aloof from them. Accord- 
ingly, while some, like Mr. O'Connell, blame them for seceding at all, 
others blame them because having taken that step they didn't go farther 
and join the " United Irishmen." Mr. Mitchel, for various reasons, which 
are certainly not without weight, hesitates to blame them for not doing 
so. Possibly many will consider his views on this question the most 
just of any. 

Every measure that could be adopted to goad the people into 
insurrection was resorted to. Judicial murders, like that of the gallant 
and much-loved William Orr, condemned on palpably perjured testimony, 
and whose memory was kept alive in the hearts and on the lips of all by 
the words, " Remember Orr ! " awoke the desire of vengeance in the pop- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 47 

ular mind. In the early part of '98 the Press newspaper, on account of 
a letter signed Marcus, which commented severely on Lord Camden's 
conduct in suffering Orr to be done to death by perjury and unheard-of 
treachery, was prosecuted. Father Coigley was taken and hanged in 
England. Arthur O'Connor was arrested. General Lake was named com- 
mander-in-chief provisionally. Lord Carhampton and his successor, the 
gallaut Sir Ealph Abercrombie, had severally resigned that position — the 
latter because his humane nature recoiled in disgust from the odious ser- 
vices required at his hands ; the former because, however cruel he may 
have been, he at least desired to suppress the conspiracy before it burst 
forth into actual revolt. He even " publicly declared that some deep 
and insidious scheme of the minister was in agitation, for, instead of 
suppressing, the Irish government was obviously disposed to excite, an 
insurrection." Abercrombie, before he resigned, stated in general orders 
that his army, owing to its disorganization, "would soon be much more 
formidable to their friends than to their enemies." Two regiments of 
foreign mercenaries, the ruthless and licentious Hessians, were intro- 
duced into Ireland to aid in dragooning the people. On the 30th of 
March, 1798, the whole country was placed under martial law by proc- 
lamation. This was the first time Wexford had been proclaimed under 
the "Insurrection Act." "From that moment," Miles Byrne tells us, 
" every one considered himself walking on a mine, ready to be blown 
up, and all sighed for orders to begin." The military had now full 
license ; any officer might have recourse to any measures of repression 
he might deem proper. The magistrates too might outrage law, secured 
as they were by the "act of indemnity." Castlereagh was determined 
that the rebellion should break out immediately. "Free quarters" were 
resorted to as a judicious means of goading the people to desperation 
when they would see a licentious soldiery living in their houses and 
amongst their families. In the absence of their male relatives, women 
were now continually forced to submit to the grossest insults and brutal- 
ities from the military ruffians quartered in their homes. These were 
the days of free-quarters, half-hangings, picketings, pitch-caps, floggings, 
house-burnings, military executions, especially in the counties of Kildare, 
Carlow and Wicklow. These were the days of the infamous torturing mag- 
istrates, Hawtry White, Solomon Richards and Parson Owens, the latter, 



48 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

above all, notorious for putting on the pitch-cap. These were the days 
when the still more infamous and inhuman Hunter Gowan (who was, 
however, ultimately shot like a dog) could murder with impunity in cold 
blood his Catholic countrymen — such as poor Garret Fennell and "James 
Darcy, a poor inoffensive man, the father of five children." Miles Byrne 
tells us this, and also how " twenty-eight fathers of families were shot 
and massacred in the Ball Alley of Carnew without trial. Mi. Cope, the 
Protestant minister, was one of the principal magistrates who presided 
at this execution. I knew several of the murdered men, particularly 
Pat Murphy of Knockbrandon, at whose wedding I was two years 
before. He was a brave and worthy man, and much esteemed. Wil- 
liam Young, a Protestant, was amongst the slaughtered." 

He tells us also how " at Dunlavin, county of Wicklow, previous to 
the rising, thirty-four men were shot without any trial ; officers, to their 
disgrace, presiding and sanctioning these proceedings." I myself remem- 
ber hearing an aged countrywoman, some years ago, tell with what hor- 
ror she gazed in " fatal '98 " on the bleeding corpses of, I think, fourteen 
farmers' sons, all young men, on Dunlavin green. Such was the miser- 
able condition of parts at least of Ireland at the beginning of May, 1798. 
To maintain this terrible reign of martial law General Lake had now in 
the island a force of more than 130,000 men, including regular troops, 
English, Welsh and Scotch fencible regiments, Irish militia and the fell 
Hessians. The Orange yeomanry were among the most ferocious tor- 
turers of the people of Leinster. 

But while Pitt and Castlereagh desired a rebellion in order that they 
might afterwards the more easily carry the Act of Union, they knew that 
such a policy was attended with risk. The rebellion might chance to 
succeed — Ireland might in the struggle shake off the yoke of England. 
To guard against this, in the words of the cold-blooded Castlereagh him- 
self, "measures were taken by government to cause its premature explo- 
sion." Then disunion was stirred up among the patriots by means of lies 
and calumnies and forgeries — some of which remind us of "the miserable 
man Barry's" false charges against the so-called "Fenians," who were 
arrested in Dublin in '65 — and doubts of their Catholic brethren were 
sown in the minds of some of the Protestant members of the " Union." 
In fact. mam 1- Presbyterian "United Irishmen" were becoming lukewarm 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 49 

and separating from the Catholics. As Mr. Mitchel says, "From one 
cause or another it is evident that towards the close of '97 the union 
rather abated than increased." Some of the Catholics, too, first in the 
North and then elsewhere, published addresses and resolutions hostile to 
the principles of the "United Irishmen." Indeed, there were numerous 
loyal addresses from both Dissenters and Catholics. The bishops and 
higher clergy tried to procure these Catholic addresses of loyalty. In 
February, '98, the parliamentary grant to the Royal College of May- 
nooth — a college which had been incorporated by law for the education 
of Catholic ecclesiastical students in '95 — was increased from £8000 to 
£10,000. This measure tended to throw dust in the eyes of weak Cath- 
olics, and it was referred to to justify their servility by selfish and time- 
serving members of that persuasion. A speedy complete emancipation 
too was promised, if not expressly, at least by implication. 

But while the vigor of the " union " had in some degree broken up in 
the North, in some other parts of the island it was still augmenting in 
strength. The conspiracy might after all prove too strong for the Mac- 
chiavellian statesmen, who, in order to carry out their sinister policy, had 
so long connived at its existence. It was above all desirable then that, 
when the rebellion would burst forth, the people should be deprived of 
leaders. To attain this end the services of informers were called into 
requisition. The first of these wretches, who demands notice, was the 
notorious Thomas Reynolds. He was a Dublin silk-mercer, and posses- 
sor by purchase of an estate in the county Kildare called Kilkea Castle. 
His wealth gave him considerable influence over his Catholic co-religion- 
ists. He was in the confidence of Oliver Bond and Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald. He had been sworn in as a " United Irishman " at the house of 
the former, and had successively filled in the organization the offices of 
colonel, treasurer and representative of Kildare, and delegate for Lein- 
ster. It happened, in the early part of '98, that he and a Dublin mer- 
chant, named Cope, had occasion to travel together to the country — to a 
place called Castle- Jordan — on business connected with a mortgage in 
which both were interested. In the course of their conversation, Cope 
was lamenting the troubled state of the country, which seemed to por- 
tend an immediate rebellion. Reynolds said he was acquainted with a 
United Irishman who, he thought, had repented his rashness in joining a 



50 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 

treasonable league and would fain make atonement to society by defeat- 
ing the plans of the conspirators. In short, Eeynolds made terms with 
Cope, received his first instalment of blood-money and agreed to betray 
his associates. On the 12th of March, in consequence of infcrmations 
given by this miscreant, Oliver Bond and fourteen other Leinster del- 
egates were arrested by Major Swan and his myrmidons in colored 
clothes, at Bond's house, in Lower Bridge street, Dublin. Other leaders 
were arrested the same day — Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. McNeven, Sweet- 
man, Henry and Hugh Jackson. Warrants were also issued against 
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Counsellor Sampson and Mr. McCormick, but 
they, receiving timely notice, escaped for the present at all events. 

A few days after these arrests the principal committee met at the 
"Brazen Head Hotel." It was there and then proposed by one Rey- 
nolds, a distant relative of his, that the traitor Reynolds should be made 
away with. The proposal was unanimously rejected. It is also stated 
that Bond had been warned prior to the arrests. He is said to have 
even held a pistol to Reynolds's breast, and to have demanded of him, 
" "What would you do to the traitor who would reveal our secrets, if he 
were in your power ?" 

" I'd shoot hiin through the heart!" replied RejTiolds without flinch- 
ing. Bond was staggered, and began to think he had been misinformed. 
In short, Reynolds's cool intrepidity saved his worthless life. 

Every effort was made by the patriots to supply the loss of the lead- 
ers who were thrown into prison, and to keep the people quiet till the ar- 
rival of a French auxiliary force. The brothers, Henry and John Sheares, 
both barristers, stepped into the vacant post of leadership. They took 
steps to rally the nation. A circular, said to have been written by Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, was handed round among the people. Its last words 
were: "Be firm, Irishmen, but be cool and cautious. Be patient yet 
a while. Trust to no unauthorized communication ; and, above all, we 
warn you — again and again we warn you — against doing the work of 
your tyrants by premature, by partial or divided exertion. If Ireland 
shall be forced to throw away the scabbard, let it be at her own time, 
not theirs." "But," as Mr. Mitchel says, "Lords Camden, Clare and 
Castlereagh were determined that it should be at their time." The 
proclamation of the 30th of March, already referred to, was doing its 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 51 



work ; also the manifesto of the 3d of April, which Sir Ealph Aber- 
crombie had been obliged to issue from his head-quarters at Kildare, 
requiring the inhabitants of the county to surrender their arms within 
ten days, and threatening them, in case of non-compliance, with "free 
quarters." Confessions of concealed arms and of plots were wrung from 
some individuals by torture. Any one "wearing the green" was of 
course outraged. Any one wearing short hair was looked on as a revo- 
lutionist, called " a croppy, and subjected to the grossest insults." Malev- 
olent individuals, under pretence of loyalty, would gratify private malice 
by fixing on the heads of those to whom they might bear some grudge, 
if they chanced to wear short hair, "pretended loyalist caps of coarse 
linen or strong brown paper, smeared with pitch on the inside, which 
in some instances, adhered so firmly as not to be disengaged without a 
laceration of the hair and even skin." The "croppies " sometimes, with 
a sort of grim humor, retaliated on the loyalists by cropping their hair 
short, thus rendering them liable to outrages from other loyalists, real or 
counterfeit. We have the authority of persons altogether in the interests 
of the British government for the atrocities inflicted on the Irish people 
by the sustainers of English rule. The gallant and humane Sir John 
Moore, who held a command in Ireland in the year '98, gives it as his 
opinion " that moderate treatment by the generals, and the preventing 
of the troops from pillaging and molesting the people, would soon restore 
tranquillity, and the latter would certainly be quiet if the gentry and yeo- 
men would only behave with tolerable decency, and not seek to gratify 
their ill-humor and revenge upon the poor." Major-general Sir William 
Napier, the admirable and high-souled author of that famous military 
classic, the " History of the Peninsular War," in a review of the life of 
Sir John Moore in the " Edinburgh Eeview," bursts into the following- 
indignant strain: "What manner of soldiers were thus let loose upon 
the wretched districts which the Ascendency -men were 'pleased to call dis- 
affected? They were men, to use the venerable Abercrombie's words, 
who were ' formidable to everybody but the enemy.' We ourselves were 
young at the time ; yet, being connected with the army, we were contin- 
ually amongst the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their con- 
versation, and we well remember — and with horror to this day — the 
tales of lust and blood and pillage — the record of their own actions 



52 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

against the miserable peasantry — which they used to relate." All this, 
be it remembered, took place before any insurrection had broken out. 
Mr. Gordon, a Protestant clergyman, in his " History of the Rebellion," 
tells the following: "Thomas Fitzgerald, high-sheriff of Tipperary, seized 
at Clonmel a gentleman of the name of Wright, against whom no grounds 
of suspicion could be conjectured by his neighbors, caused five hundred 
lashes to be inflicted on him in the severest manner, and confined him 
several days without permitting his wounds to be dressed,, so that his 
recovery from such a state of torture and laceration could hardly be 
expected. In a trial at law, after the rebellion, on an action of dam- 
ages brought by Wright against this magistrate, the innocence of the 
plaintiff appeared so manifest, even at a time when prejudice ran amaz- 
ingly high against persons accused of disloyalty, that the defendant was 
condemned to pay five hundred pounds to his prosecutor. Many other 
actions of damages on similar grounds would have been commenced, if 
the Parliament had not put a stop to such proceedings by an act of 
indemnity for all errors committed by magistrates from supposed zeal 
for the public service. A letter written in the French language, found in 
the pocket of Wright, was hastily considered a proof of guilt, though the 
letter was of a perfectly innocent nature." 

On one occasion Sir John Moore, on his march from Fermoy, entered 
the town of Clogheen, in Tipperary. The first sight which struck him 
was an unfortunate man tied up and undergoing the torment of the lash. 
The street was lined with country -folks on their knees. Sir John was 
informed that the high-sheriff, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, was mak- 
ing great discoveries by flogging the truth out of many respectable per- 
sons. His plan, it appears, was " to flog each person till he told the 
truth." Sir John Moore was filled with intense disgust, both towards 
the sheriff and his infallible method of arriving at "the truth." 

It is almost unnecessary to add that the memory of this wretch is 
embalmed in the traditional hatred of the people of Tipperary ; so much 
so that a few years ago, when his grandson, under the pressure of some 
private misfortunes, committed suicide by tying a heavy stone round his 
neck and drowning himself, the rage of the peasantry would hardly suf- 
fer his remains to receive human, not to say Christian, burial. It was 
with the utmost difficulty that the unfortunate man's body finally found 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 53 

a grave. It appears Sir Thomas's son also met with a violent death, and 
that his great-grandson hung himself by accident when showing some 
playmates how his grandfather used to hang the '• Croppies." 

Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been in concealment since the 12th of 
March. Towards the middle of May the bloodhounds of the Castle, 
headed by the notorious Major Sirr, were hot upon his track. On the 
night of the 17th he had a very narrow escape in Watling street, Dub- 
lin. A scuffle took place between Lord Edward's party and the myr- 
midons of Sirr. Sirr was pinioned by two of Lord Edward's attend- 
ants. One of them — Pat Gallagher — struck at him several times with 
a dagger, but Sirr was protected by a coat-of-mail worn beneath his uni- 
form. The major's was as much a hairbreadth escape as Lord Edward's. 

But on the 19th of May the fatal hour arrived : it was seven o'clock 
in the evening. Lord Edward was reposing on a bed in the house of a 
citizen named Murphy. The house was No. 153 Thomas street, Dublin. 
Murphy entered the room to ask him would he take a cup of tea. Lord 
Edward thanked him, and said he would after a while. They then chat- 
ted for some time on indifferent topics, when suddenly Murphy heard the 
trampling of feet upon the stairs. He turned round with a startled air 
and saw Major Swan at the door. According to Murphy, some person 
in a soldier's jacket, with a sword in his hand, was behind him. Mur- 
phy placed himself between Swan and the bed. Swan, however, looked 
over him, and saw Lord Edward. He then informs his lordship that 
he has a warrant against him and that resistance will be vain, assu- 
ring him at the same time that he will treat him with the greatest 
respect. Then Swan advances towards the bed, but, as he does so, 
Lord Edward springs up in an instant, snaps a pistol at him, which 
misses fire, then "like a tiger" (this is Murphy's expression) closes 
with him. Swan now puts his hand in his breast pocket, but Lord 
Edward, perceiving the motion, strikes at him with the dagger he has 
drawn from beneath the pillow, pinioning his hand to his breast. Swan 
loses three fingers and receives a superficial wound in the side, but man- 
ages in the struggle to fire his pistol and hit Lord Edward in the shoul- 
der. Lord Edward staggers and falls against the bed, but, rousing all 
his energies, immediately rallies, springs again upon his antagonist, and 
by a grand sudden effort flings him to the other side of the room. Swan 



54 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

has already cried out, "Ryan, Ey an! I am basely murdered!" Captain 
Ryan lias heard these words while engaged in searching another part of 
the house ; so now he arrives on the scene of deadly conflict — deadly 
for him as for the heroic Geraldine. In the act of entering the room he 
aims his pistol, pulls the trigger, but misses fire. He next makes a 
lunge at Lord Edward with a sword-cane, as he is still engaged with 
Swan. The blade bends on Fitzgerald's ribs, affecting him so much for 
the moment that he throws himself on the bed. But when Ryan throws 
himself upon him, the scuffle becomes fiercer and more terrible. Lord 
Edward does fearful execution with his " awfully-constructed double-edged 
dagger." He inflicts wound after wound on Ryan to the number of four- 
teen, one of which lays open the lower part of his belly, so that his bowels 
are falling out. Lord Edward tries to make his way to the door, tramp- 
ling Ryan under his feet. The latter, however, clings to him with tena- 
cious death-grasp and impedes his endeavors to escape. According to 
the account of Captain Ryan's son, Mr. D. F. Ryan, of the excise in Lon- 
don, the captain's hands were at this stage of the ferocious struggle dis- 
abled, so that it was with his legs he clung round Lord Edward. But 
Major Sirr's account is somewhat different. " On my arrival," the major 
writes to Mr. D. F. Ryan, "in view of Lord Edward, Ryan and Swan, I 
beheld his lordship standing with a dagger in his hand, as if ready to 
plunge it into my friends, while dear Ryan, seated on the bottom step 
of the flight of the upper stairs, had Lord Edward grasped with both 
his arms by the legs or thighs, and Swan in a somewhat similar situa- 
tion, both laboring under the torment of their wounds, when, without 
hesitation, I fired at Lord Edward's dagger-arm, lodging several slugs in 
his shoulder, and the instrument of death fell to the ground. Having 
secured the titled prisoner, my first concern was for your dear father's 
safety. I viewed his intestines with grief and sorrow." 

Sirr up to this moment had been below with from two to three hun- 
dred men. and had been busy placing guards round the house to prevent 
the possibility of escape. When he came up the stairs he was accom- 
panied with a strong body of soldiers. In truth, it was hardly safe to 
ascend without them. Even after his dagger-arm was disabled, the 
indomitable Geraldine refused to give in. He made one desperate effort 
to burst through the guard of soldiers, but was at last overpowered and 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 55 

rendered insensible by repeated blows. The whole struggle lasted little 
more than a minute. He was carried 'down stairs in a sheet taken off' 
the bed in which he lay. The soldiers brutally kicked him : a wretched 
drummer wounded him in the back of the neck. This wound was the 
source of exquisite torture to the noble patriot in his last moments. At 
the time of his capture he was already in bad health : he was suffering 
from an attack of cold, and was quite feverish. 

All the soldiers, however, were not so savage. When Sirr called upon 
them to follow him up stairs, one soldier exclaimed : 

" I fought by Lord Edward's side in America. He was a kind and 
brave officer, and by G — d I'll never assist in capturing him!" 

Sirr reported him to his commanding officer: he was shot next 
morning. 

In the biographies of Lord Edward the reader will find related in 
detail the sad sequel of this story; how calm Lord Edward became 
when he was brought to the castle, just as the fighting Swedish king, 
Charles XII., after his fierce combat against overwhelming numbers of 
Turks and Tartars in the house at Bender, became immediately all- 
smiling and serene ; how, when he was lodged in Newgate prison, the 
under-jailer having been heavily bribed, he enjoyed the last delight of 
one brief stolen interview with his young French wife, the gentle and 
lovely Pamela, illegitimate daughter of the duke of Orleans by the cel- 
ebrated Madame de Genlis, and half-sister to King Louis Philippe ; how 
the mean British viceroy and his meaner Irish advisers forced Lady Pamela 
Fitzgerald into exile while he was still lingering on his dungeon death- 
bed (but when did British statesmen show aught like magnanimity to a 
fallen foe, especially if that foe were Irish-?) ; how his wounds, which at 
first appeared not to show fatal symptoms, at last grew worse; how, 
when raging fever set in the night before his death, in his wild delirium 
he fancied himself again in that fierce grapple of life and death, and 
shouted to his imaginary foes, " Come on, damn you ! come on !" finally, 
how the base legislature after his death pursued both him and his with 
craven vindictiveness. They were so lost to all feeling of manhood as 
to pass a bill of attainder to rob his wife and children of all means of 
subsistence. Reynolds, the informer, was the chief " credible " witness 
examined on this occasion. Vainly Curran, at the bar of the House of 



56 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

Commons, denounced him in accents of noble wrath, and pleaded with 
generous pathos for the hapless widow and orphans. " I have often," he 
said, " of late gone to the dungeon of the captive, but never have I gone 
to the grave of the dead to receive instructions for his defence, nor, in 
truth, have I ever before been at the trial of a dead man!" Cm-ran 
entered into an elaborate argument, contending that a posthumous 
attainder was at variance with the principles of British law ; was, in 
its nature, inhuman, impolitic and against all notions of equity. The 
close of his speech is one of the noblest outbursts of Irish eloquence: 
" One more topic you will permit me to add. Every act of the sort 
ought to have a practical morality flowing from its principles. If loy- 
alty and justice require that these infants should be deprived of bread, 
must it not be a violation of that principle to give them food or shelter ? 
Must not every loyal and just man wish to see them, in the words of the 
famous Golden Bull, ' always poor and necessitous, and for ever accompa- 
nied by the infamy of their father, languishing in continued indigence 
and finding their punishment in living and their relief in dying ' ? If 
the widowed mother should carry the orphan heir of her unfortunate 
husband to the gate of any man who might feel himself touched with 
the sad vicissitudes of human affairs, who might feel a compassionate 
reverence for the noble blood that flowed in his veins, nobler than the 
royalty that first ennobled it, that like a rich stream rose and ran till it 
hid its fountain, — if, remembering the many noble qualities of his unfor- 
tunate father, his heart melted over the calamities of the child, if his 
heart swelled, if his eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate hand were 
stretched out by his pity or his gratitude to the poor excommunicated 
sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear or the traitorous humanity?" 
He then conjures them to reflect that the fact "of guilt or innocence, 
which must be the foundation of this bill, is not now, after the death of 
the party, capable of being tried, consistently with the liberty of a free 
people or the unalterable rules of eternal justice ; and that as to the for- 
feiture and the ignominy which it enacts, that only can be punishment 
which lights upon guilt, and that can be only vengeance which breaks 
upon innocence!" 

The death of Lord Edward was a terrible blow to the Irish cause. 
He was a brave and skilful soldier. In the British army he had been a 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 57 

major, and had distinguished himself in the latter years of the Amer- 
ican war. No military leader of any great importance now remained to 
the "United Irishmen," at least in Ireland. Seeing what the insurgents 
were able to do even without leaders or discipline, it may be doubted 
whether, if Lord Edward had lived to place himself at their head, they 
might not have held out against the whole power of England, in spite of 
all the drawbacks that crippled their efforts, till France could come to 
the rescue with forces adequate to the task of securing Ireland's libera- 
tion. The intrepidity, which nerved Lord Edward in his desperate strug- 
gle against his captors, he showed all through life on every occasion cal- 
culated to call it forth. On the battle-field, in encounters in the lonely 
woods of America, where single-handed he fought against odds, in the 
Irish House of Commons, where he defied the rage of the venal majority, 
and in various other situations of difficulty, he braved alike hostile opin- 
ion or physical danger with fearless eye and soul. A trifling incident 
that occurred to him one evening, when he was riding home from the 
races at the Curragh of Kildare, in company with Arthur O'Connor, will 
serve to show his power of proper self-assertion. He was in the habit, 
at the time, of wearing a green cravat. A party of dragoon officers, 
who were also at the races, saw this symbol of disaffection round 
his neck, and determined to take it from him. As Lord Edward and his 
friend rode along side by side, the band of British champions galloped 
past, and then wheeled round and faced the two gentlemen. Thus, as it 
were, intercepted, Lord Edward, reining in his steed, asked the mean- 
ing of this unlooked-for impertinence. The spokesman of the British 
cavaliers at once made a demand that he should "doff" the rebel sym- 
bol, which offended them as British officers. 

" The uniform you wear," said Lord Edward in reply to their polite 
request, "would lead one to suppose that you are gentlemen ; your con- 
duct, however, conveys a very different impression. As to this neck- 
cloth that so offends you, all I can say is, here I stand ; let any man 
among you, who dares, come forward and take it off." 

Lord Edward could hardly say or do more than this to oblige them or 
meet their wishes halfway, but, singular to say, not a man of the British he- 
roes budged an inch forward. If they didn't exactly stand with their fin- 
gers in their mouths, at least their faces looked wondrous blank and foolish. 



58 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

But if Lord Edward showed an anxiety to do ever}- thing in reason to 
make himself agreeable to those loyal cavaliers, his politeness was noth- 
ing to the obliging courtesy of Arthur O'Connor. This gentleman, desi- 
rous to gratify their love of fighting, which he thought only natural in 
military men, and believing the pistol to be the proper arbitrator in all 
such disputes, at once himself proposed that they should select two of 
their number. " Just select two," says he, " and my friend, Lord Edward, 
and myself will be most happy to meet them, and give them every sat- 
isfaction about the green cravat that gentlemen can desire." 

But all this polite compliance went for nothing. Instead of jumping 
with alacrity at Mr. O'Connor's amiable suggestion of "pistols for four 
and coffee for two," the British heroes suddenly felt their generous indig- 
nation at "the wearing of the green" cool down a bit. They felt their 
valor, like that of their countryman, Bob Acres, rapidly " oozing out, as it 
were, at the palms of their hands." The cravat, which smelt of sedition at 
least, if not " flat burglary," and irritated so dreadfully their loyal nervous 
systems, remained intact on Lord Edward's neck. In short, these paladins 
in embryo absolutely sneaked away just as if they were bullies or cowards, 
or both. The most imaginative of British bards could hardly sing of their 
retreat — 

"Oh, 'twas a glorious sight to see 
The march of English chivalry !" 

In fact, the ladies at the county ball, which was held in Kildare a 
short time after, seemed to regard them as actually bullies and pol- 
troons, for they all refused to dance with them. 

In almost every age of Irish history some one or other of the Ger- 
aldines has appeared in arms against British rule. Lord Edward was the 
representative Geraldine of his day. Indeed, he may be called the last 
genuine patriot of his house, though a feeble gleam of patriotic feeling 
is still now and then perceptible in the once glorious family of Leinster. 
Lord Henry Fitzgerald, an elder brother of Lord Edward, might justly 
claim the praise due to patriotism. But their eldest brother, William 
Robert, duke of Leinster, though amiable and liberal in his opinions, was 
weak and vacillating. Tet one incident in his life struck a terror as 
great, albeit absurd, into the hearts of the English people as the appear- 
ance of his brother Edward at the head of 100,000 " United Irishmen," 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 59 

in '98, could possibly have inspired. Though the occurrence may be a 
little out of place in this part of my narrative, yet, as a sort of relief to 
the terrible scenes with which I have crowded this chapter, I may be 
allowed to introduce it. During the glorious volunteer movement the 
duke was appointed commander of the Dublin volunteers. The cere- 
mony on the day of his assuming the command was conducted with the 
utmost pomp and military display. The artillery was drawn out in Col- 
lege Green, and multitudinous masses of spectators cheered enthusias- 
tically for the popular chief of the popular House of Leinster. While 
the triumphant shouts of the populace are still ringing through the 
air, the captain of an English collier chances to land on the Dublin 
quays. He hears the din, and quickly, with eyes and mouth all open, 
he asks those standing near, " What is the meaning of all this rejoicing?" 
"Oh!" quoth a wag, "they are crowning William Kobert, duke of 
Leinster, king of Ireland!" 

The poor skipper hastily concludes that, under such a revolutionary 
state of things, it would not be safe for him and his cargo to remain in 
Ireland. In a twinkling he hurries on board his ship again, weighs 
anchor, and makes sail for England as if pursued by Paul Jones or the 
devil himself. Once he finds himself safe in Liverpool, without losing 
a moment he makes an affidavit before the worshipful mayor that he saw 
the duke of Leinster crowned king of Ireland. An express forthwith 
conveys the startling intelligence to London. A cabinet council is sum- 
moned. The alarming news spreads like wildfire. The modern Babylon 
remains panic-stricken till the regular mail arrives, after which the por- 
tentous rumor is heard no more. 

We have seen that the testimony of Reynolds was used to furnish 
grounds for the posthumous bill of attainder. That wretch had been 
under the greatest obligations to the generosity of the noble Geraldine, 
yet he did not for a moment shrink from the odious task of helping to 
rob his benefactor's wife and children of their means of subsistence. 
His base ingratitude need not in the slightest degree excite our aston- 
ishment. The man, who is a traitor to his country, will be equally faith- 
less to his friends, if by his faithlessness he can promote his seeming self- 
interest. Indeed, this base ingratitude is one of the most salient charac- 
teristics of the informer tribe. We find the infamous Xaaie, the informer 



60 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of our own days, obliged to admit in cross-examination at one of the 
state prosecutions of '65, that he owed the possession of two situations 
• — his daily bread, in short — to the writer of these pages, whom he had 
just helped to consign to penal servitude under a sentence of twenty 
years. 

For long years the source, whence the English government derived 
their knowledge of Lord Edward's place of concealment, was a complete 
mystery. Some persons, altogether innocent, fell under the dishonoring 
suspicion of having disclosed the secret hiding-place. It was unchari- 
tably whispered by many that poor Murphy, who suffered imprisonment 
and was utterly ruined in consequence of his connection with Lord Ed- 
ward, was the traitor. Honest, rough, manly Samuel Neilson, who dined 
with him the very day on which he was captured, was by others sus- 
pected of having done this deed of perfidy. Time and research and the 
publication of certain letters and state papers, bearing on the events of 
'98, have at last brought the truth to light. The innocent Murphy and 
Neilson are cleared of all taint of suspicion, and the treachery is, to all 
appearance, brought home to the door of a sleek, respectable Catholic law- 
yer named Francis Magan. Dr. Madden and Mr. Fitzpatrick may claim 
a large share of whatever merit belongs to this discovery. The lan- 
guage of Dr. Madden in the following passage is somewhat cautious, if 
not exactly hesitating : "To those who may be disposed to follow up 
these efforts of mine to bring the villain's memory to justice, I would 
suggest : Let them not seek for the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald 
in the lower or middle classes of the society of ' United Irishmen ;' and per- 
haps, if they are to find the traitor a member of any of the learned profes- 
sions, it is not the medical one that has been disgraced by his connec- 
tion with it." In truth, there is little doubt that Francis Magan was 
the traitor. This gentleman enjoyed to the close of his life a snug pen- 
sion from the Castle government for his valuable services. The "Corn- 
wallis Correspondence" makes us aware of the fact that that other 
double-dyed monster of perfidy, Higgins, otherwise called "the sham 
squire," was made the channel through which the information, fatal to 
Lord Edward, reached the government. 

There were unhappily others besides Magan who, in those dark times, 
stood high in the confidence of the United Irishmen, while they were 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 61 

secretly in the pay of the alien government, and who contrived to con- 
ceal their rascality to the very end of their lives. Such a one was Leon- 
ard MacNally, the barrister. We have already heard O'Connell tell a 
humorous anecdote, in which he and his son figure more comically than 
creditably. This man was associated Avith the illustrious Curran in the 
defence of most of the prisoners tried during the state prosecutions of 
those days. In fact, MacNally was himself a "United Irishman." 
Curran had boundless confidence in this arch-deceiver. Both were retained 
for the defence of Patrick Finney. On this occasion Curran could not refrain 
from impulsively throwing his arm round the rascal's neck and saying, with 
emotion, " My old and excellent friend, I have long known and respected 
the honesty of your heart, but never until this occasion was I acquainted 
with the extent of your abilities." W. H. Curran, in his excellent life 
of his father, talks of " the uncompromising and romantic fidelity " of 
friendship shown by MacNally to Curran for forty-three years. The elo- 
quent Charles Phillips refused to believe him a betrayer. When his guilt 
became known after his death, Curran's son was horrified. Such was the 
extreme good-nature or weakness of the latter that he refrained from 
bringing out a fresh edition of the biography of his father, in order to 
avoid hurting the feelings of MacNally' s family by the remarks which 
he should necessarily have to make on the old sinner, Leonard. Per- 
haps it is not so very wonderful that men were deceived by MacNally's 
specious semblance of patriotism. He constituted himself the cham- 
pion of the " United Irishmen " when Sir Jonah Barrington sneered at 
them, and actually fought their quarrel in a duel with that eccentric and 
exquisitely humorous knight. People on the patriot side, during Leon- 
ard's life, thought it a horrible grievance that the government would 
never give him a silk gown. His friend, Curran, when the Whigs came 
into power, used all his influence with the duke of Bedford to get him 
made a king's counsel. But His Grace, for some private reason, reso- 
lutely refused to call him to the inner bar. In 1807, General Sir Arthur 
Wellesley, after vvards the famous " Iron Duke " of Wellington, wrote the 
following letter to Mr. Trail, an officer of the Irish government : "I en- 
tirely agree with you respecting the employment of our informer. Such 
a measure would do much mischief. It would disgust the loyal of all 
descriptions ; at the same time it would render useless our private com- 



62 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

munication with him, as no further trust would be placed in him by the 
disloyal " This letter is believed to have reference to MacNally. The 
following passage from a letter of Sir Arthur to Lord Hawkesbury, writ- 
ten in 1808, alsc throws a lurid light on the ghastly spy-system of those 
noble Britons, who, if you believe themselves, hate anything like a 
crooked or concealed policy, and are always manly and aboveboard in 
their dealings. It is curious to find the blunt and apparently straight- 
forward Arthur Wellesley busying himself in these dirty doings in the 
dark, and apparently such a proficient in the noble art of state "hugger- 
mugger." Here is the passage: " The extracts of the letters sent to you 

by Lord Grrenville were sent to us by , the Catholic crator, two 

months ago. The — mentioned is a man desirous of being em- 
ployed by the government as a spy, and his trade is that of a spy to all 
parties. He offered himself to Lord Fingal and others, as well as to me, 
and we now watch him closely." 

O'Connell, like so many others, was somewhat astonished when the 
fact of MacNally's guilt became publicly known. This took place after 
his death, in 1820, when, his family claiming the reversion of his reg- 
ular pension of £300 a year, Lord Wellesley demanded a statement of 
the terms on which it had been granted. Besides this regular pension, 
he received, according to the secret service papers, various other pay- 
ments. In 1803 he was Robert Emmet's counsel (such was the trust 
reposed in him), and on the 14th of September, a few days before the 
trial, it would appear from an entry that L. M. received £100 from the 
Castle. In the same year we find this government record: "Mr. Pol- 
lock for L. M., £1000." He visited Emmet in prison, and on the morn- 
ing of his death took leave of him, apparently with all the emotion and 
grief of a faithful friend. From MacJNTally's case, and others like it, 
O'Connell used to deduce arguments against secret societies. He used 
to say the MacNallys were not all dead yet. Doubtless this is more or 
less true. It cannot reasonably be denied that secret societies are ex- 
posed to the danger of informers, any more than that soldiers are liable 
to be shot in battle or seamen to go to " Davy Jones's locker." But this 
obvious fact does not make conspiracies, in some shape or form, one whit 
the less absolutely necessary to struggling nations under various conceiv- 
able circumstances. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 63 



The contrast between the manner in which the rebels and that in 
which the king's soldiery demeaned themselves towards females in '98 is 
very striking, and altogether in favor of the former. The Rev. Mr. Gor- 
don, a Protestant clergyman, though in no degree partial to the rebels or 
their cause, admits that they cannot with justice be accused of violating 
in any way the respect due to female honor. " In one point," he says, 
" I think we must allow some praise to the rebels. Amid all their atroci- 
ties, the chastity of the fair sex was respected. I have not been able to 
ascertain one instance to the contrary in the county of Wexford, though 
many beautiful young women were absolutely in their power." Indeed, 
without vouching for its accuracy, I have seen it stated in more places 
than one that some of the fair royalist ladies — " dames exuberant with 
tingling blood," to borrow Thomas Davis's expression — complained of 
the coldness and insensibility to female charms of the United Irishmen. 
In short, they are asserted to have accused " the Croppies " of want of 
gallantry. 

It is not possible in a brief and hasty sketch of the conspiracy of the 
" United Irishmen," like the present, to give the reader any adequate idea 
of the atrocious means by which the government succeeded in precipita- 
ting the insurrection. In the numerous works devoted expressly to the 
subject the reader will find ample details of the baleful arts of Pitt, Cas- 
tlereagh, Clare and the rest of the set, and notices of the vile instru- 
ments employed by these statesmen to aid in giving effect to their hell- 
ish schemes. I have been able to do little more than mention the names 
of Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, Hunter Gowan, and John Claudius Ber- 
esford, whose " riding-school " became famous or infamous for its scenes 
of rebel-torturing. Of these monsters of infernal cruelty it is enough 
to say (and the remark applies to many more of their contemporaries) 
that by their deeds they have consecrated their names to lasting infamy. 

Of one of the inhuman wretches of that day, however (Lieutenant 
Hempenstall), I shall say a few passing words. His cruelties are gro- 
tesque as well as horrible. Their strange aspect even makes them seem 
incredible, but they are sufficiently well authenticated. His name is 
somewhat in keeping with his pursuits and pastimes. He was a man 
of gigantic stature, and his great delight was to hang rebels over his 
shoulders. Hence he received the odd nickname of "the walking gal- 
lows." 



64 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

It was the burning of his house and chapel by the cowardly yeo- 
manry, who, thinking the people had surrendered all their arms, had 
now commenced burning and destroying all around them, that drove 
Father John Murphy of Boolevogue, an accomplished and worthy priest, 
into rebellion, at the head of his persecuted flock. He had exerted him- 
self to the utmost to preserve peace and to oblige the people to surren- 
der their arms. But now he felt it his duty to tell his suffering flock, 
who crowded round him in the woods asking for advice, that it was bet- 
ter for them to die bravely in the field than be butchered in their houses. 
They all promised to follow him. Almost immediately he defeats the 
Camolin yeomanry. Their acting commander, Lieutenant Bookey, is 
killed. On the 27th of May he defeats Colonel Foote and the North Cork 
militia in the memorable combat of Oulart Hill. His skirmishers retire 
up the hill before the royalists, who are blown and disordered in the pur- 
suit. As the North Cork approach the summit of the hill, Father John 
and his merry men jump up from behind a ditch which serves them as 
an intrenchment. The North Cork fire a volley. Before they can reioad 
the insurgents dash forward and swarm round them. In a few minutes 
all is over. The persecuting North Cork are cut to pieces. None of 
them escape save Colonel Foote, a sergeant, a drummer and two privates. 
The different cavalry corps, who are mere helpless spectators of the fight, 
retreat precipitately — some to "Wexford, some to Gorey, some to Ennis- 
corthy. They commit atrocities of every kind on their retreat, shooting 
men and burning houses. The next victory gained by Father John was 
that of Enniscorthy on the 28th of May. After some hard fighting the 
town was left in the hands of the insurgents. Some additional royalist 
checks having followed, the garrison of Wexford became panic-stricken 
and abandoned the town, which was surrendered to the peasant army. 
Before the close of the month of May, the whole of the county Wexford 
was in open insurrection. 

The space at my disposal does not permit me to enter into any length- 
ened details regarding the events of this rebellion, or even to mention the 
names of all the combats that were fought. The battle of Tubberneering 
or Clough was a complete victory for the insurgents of the camp of Cor- 
rigrua. As they were marching towards Gorey they suddenly met the 
column of Colonel Walpole, who was on his way to attack their camp, 



THE LIFE OF DA.NIEL O'CONNELL. 65 

This officer was completely surprised. The insurgents opened a heavy 
fire from the fields. Early in the action Walpole was shot through the 
head. His troops fled in great confusion, severely punished, and obliged 
to leave their three pieces of cannon in the hands of the rebels. 

The battle of New Eoss, fought on the 5th of June, was very obsti- 
nately contested. The insurgents, under Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, a 
Protestant barrister and man of property, who had been elected com- 
mander-in-chief of the Wexford army, were anxious to drive General 
Johnson out of New Eoss, because then they would be in communica- 
tion with Kilkenny and Munster. They expected, in short, that a gen- 
eral rising of the south of Ireland would follow if they could win the 
town of New Eoss. Nothing could exceed the impetuosity and despera- 
tion of the rebel attack. The town was carried, the royal troops driven 
across the wooden bridge over the Barrow into Kilkenny. Unhappily, 
the Irish then began to drink, and soon hundreds were imbecile and be- 
sotted with liquor. Johnson rallies the troops and returns to the assault. 
After some fierce fighting he is once more master of the town, the out- 
skirts of which are now in flames, fired by the insurgents, as Enniscorthy 
had been on the 28th. Again, the rebels, having rallied, advance to the 
assault. Again the troops give way. The lost ground is regained by the 
Irish, but they repeat their folly, and are once more driven out. A third 
time their obstinate bravery penetrates to the heart of the town ; the 
firing continues till night-time, but at last, wanting officers to direct 
them, the main body of the insurgents are finally driven out, after an obsti- 
nate engagement of more than ten hours, leaving behind them some thou- 
sands of their comrades, hundreds of whom are put to the sword. Ac- 
cording to Sir Jonah Barrington, "more than five thousand were either 
killed or consumed in the conflagration." Such was the well-fought com- 
bat of New Eoss, which was lost mainly, if not solely, through the intox- 
ication of a large portion of the insurgents. A horrible deed — the burn- 
ing of the barn of Scullabogue — the same night, stained the noble cause 
of the insurgents. Some fugitives from New Eoss, headed by John Mur- 
phy of Loughgur, excited and maddened by the deeds of cold-blooded 
slaughter perpetrated both on that day and on other occasions by the 
royalists, deliberately set fire to the barn, containing about a hundred 
prisoners, and consumed it and its inmates by way of retaliation. Bar- 



66 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

rington, Plowden, Mitchel and others prove clearly, by impartial testi- 
mony, that the rebels were induced to do this horrid deed solely by the 
circumstance "that they had received intelligence that the military were 
again putting all the rebel prisoners to death in the town of Eoss, as 
they had done at Dunlavin and Carnew." 

After the defeat of New Eoss, Bagenal Harvey, who was horrified and 
anguish-stricken at the massacre of Scullabogue, was deposed from his 
command, and Father Philip Eoche was elected in his stead. Harvey 
was an amiable and patriotic man — clever, too, but he wanted military 
talent and energy. He had sat up carousing the night before the bat- 
tle. Though personally brave, during the conflict he showed himself 
alike destitute of decision and mental resources. 

On the 9th of June twenty thousand insurgents, about five thousand 
of whom had guns of some sort or other, the rest being armed with pikes, 
with three pieces of cannon, commanded by Fathers John and Michael 
Murphy, attacked on all sides, at four o'clock in the evening, the king's 
forces in Arklow. These insurgents were the men who had totally de- 
feated the unfortunate Walpole's column at Tubberneering. This battle 
also was obstinately contested. General Needham, the king's general, 
was only prevented from retreating by his second in command, Skerrit. 
These officers, be it remarked here in passing, were both Irishmen. 
Both sides claim the victory. Sir Jonah Barrington terms the fight " a 
drawn battle." Miles Byrne says the insurgents won, but admits that 
they did not follow up their victory with vigor. Possibly their ardor was 
damped by the death of Father Michael Murphy, who fell as he was 
bravely leading them to the attack. The brave Esmond Eyan, who skil- 
fully directed the three pieces of rebel artillery, was wounded. Possibly, 
if they had possessed an energetic commander to lead them on to Dub- 
lin, it might have been all over with British rule in Ireland. 

Much has been said by the partisans of England of the cruelties per- 
petrated by the insurgents in W exford town while their short-lived repub- 
lic had sway there. These cruelties have been grossly exaggerated, but 
if all that has been asserted against them by their enemies were true, 
their crimes would not equal in number a third of those perpetrated by 
the English and the Orange Ascendency faction against the Irish people. 
The Eev. Mr. Gordon is inclined to set down the number of persons exe- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 67 

cuted without law in Wexford during the insurgent regime at one hun- 
dred and one. These were executed on the principle of retaliation. Mr. 
Mitchel justly remarks : " Probably ten times that number of innocent 
country-people had been, during the same three weeks, murdered in cold 
blood by the yeomanry." 

The insurgents of Wexford were distributed in several camps. The 
chief of these was that in the centre at Yinegar Hill, on the banks of 
the Slaney, at the foot of which eminence lies the town of Enniscorthy. 
Here Father Philip Eoche commanded. On the 21st of June the com- 
mander-in-chief of the royal forces, Lieutenant-general Lake, having 
concentrated from all quarters — Arklow, Boss and elsewhere — the differ- 
ent bodies of troops under Lieutenant-general Dundas, Major-generals Sir 
James Duff and Loftus, Johnson and Eustace, to the number of thirteen 
thousand men (he had deemed twenty thousand necessary), advanced to 
the attack of the rebel camp. Eustace and Johnson were to attack En- 
niscorthy ; the other columns were to ascend the hill. The rebels had a 
few pieces of half-disabled artillery. About two thousand were armed 
with firearms of one sort or another, but the vast majority had nothing 
better than pikes. Their supply of ammunition was scanty. In spite 
of these great disadvantages, they made a gallant stand. Even Sir Arch- 
ibald Alison, Tory and enemy of the Irish cause though he is, admits 
that they fought much better than could have been expected under the 
circumstances. Their leaders encouraged them by words, their women by 
cries. They gave the enemy back defiant shouts as they faced with de- 
spairing valor the storm of shot and shell that burst on the four sides of 
their position. Lake's horse was shot under him ; many of his officers 
were killed or wounded, some ran away or hid themselves. But, in spite 
of the intrepid front shown by the insurgents, the royal troops steadily 
mounted the hill. Their superior armament at length prevailed over 
the half-defenceless crowd of untrained peasants. The latter broke and 
abandoned their position. It was fortunate for them that the non-arri- 
val of General Needham's column at its appointed time left a space open 
in their rear. Owing to this " the insurgents were enabled to retreat to 
Wexford through a country where they could not be pursued by cavalry 
or cannon." In short, they suffered no punishment worth speaking of 
in the pursuit. 



68 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



The battle of Vinegar Hill was the last engagement that took place 
of any great importance. On this occasion atrocities were committed on 
both sides. During the days preceding the battle the insurgents in the 
camp at Vinegar Hill, maddened at seeing the track of the royal col- 
umns everywhere marked by havoc, conflagration and ruin, shot or 
piked about eighty-four (some say more) of their prisoners. On the 
evening of the day of battle the royal troops, especially the Hessian 
mercenaries, committed fearful excesses in Enniscorthy, treating loyal- 
ists as badly as rebels. Their " most diabolicalact of this kind was the 
firing of a house which had been used as a hospital by the insurgents, 
in which numbers of sick and wounded, who were unable to escape from 
the flames, were burned to ashes." (MitcheVs Continuation.) The Eev- 
erend Mr. Gordon, however, states that he heard the burning was acci- 
dental. 

I have not space to enter into any details of the horrors that now 
took place. We have British breach of faith and British cruelty as of 
yore. We have our anti-Irish countrymen of the Ascendency faction 
emulating and outstripping the English in the race of atrocity. Of 
course we have occasional sanguinary reprisals by the rebels. The for- 
eign dragoons of General Ferdinand Hompesch are perhaps the most 
savage of all. These brutal Germans not merely ill-treat women, but 
occasionally shoot them. Such was the fate of a respectable lady of En- 
niscorthy, at her own window — one Mrs. Stringer. "The rebels (though 
her husband was a royalist) a short time after took some of those for- 
eign soldiers prisoners, and piked them all, as they told them, 'just to 
teach them hoiu to shoot ladies.'" [Mitchel.) The rebels are admitted by 
all authorities to have been guiltless of outrages against the fair sex. 

In those terrible days you might have seen along the roads dead men 
"with their skulls split asunder, their bowels ripped open and their 
throats cut across ;" dead women, around some of whom their surviving 
children were creeping and bewailing; dead children, too. In Gorey, 
one day, you might have seen the pigs devouring the bodies of nine men 
who had been hung the day before. Several others recently shot lay 
there, some still breathing. 

The Wexford insurgents held out for some time longer. Indeed, 
Dwyer and other outlaws braved the British government for years in 



\ THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 69 

the mountain-fastnesses of Wicklow. I shall only, however, ere conclud- 
ing this notice of the Wexford outbreak, refer to one more notable skirmish, 
that of Bally ellis, in which " that infernal regiment " of cavalry, as Miles 
Byrne properly styles them, the Ancient Britons, were, by a just retribu- 
tion, cut to pieces to the last man. On the 29th of June the Irish, worn- 
out by constant marches and half starved, were on their march to Car- 
new. The Ancient Britons pursued them. " At Ballyellis, one mile 
from Carhew, the Ancient Britons, being in full gallop, charging, and as 
they thought driving all before them, to their great surprise were suddenly 
stopped by a barricade of cars thrown across the road, and at the same 
moment that the head of the column was thus stopped, the rear was 
attacked by a mass of pikemen, who sallied out from behind a wall, and 
completely shut up the road, as soon as the last of the cavalry had 
passed. The remains or ruins of an old deer-park wall, on the right- 
hand side of the road, ran along for about half a mile — in many parts 
it was not more than three or four feet high. All along the inside of 
this our gunsmen and pikemen were placed. On the left-hand side of 
the road there was an immense ditch, with swampy ground, which few 
horses coulcl be found to leap. In this advantageous situation for our 
men the battle began — the gunsmen, half covered, firing from behind the 
wall, whilst the English cavalry, though well mounted, could only make 
use of their carbines and pistols, for with their sabres they were unable 
to ward off the thrusts of our pikemen, who sallied out on them in the 
most determined manner. 

" Thus, in less than an hour, this infamous regiment, which had been 
the horror of the country, was slain to the last man, as well as the few 
yeoman cavalry who had the courage to take part in the action ; for all 
those who quit their horses and got into the fields were followed and piked 
on the marshy ground. The greater part of the numerous cavalry corps 
which accompanied the Ancient Britons kept on the rising ground, to the 
right side of the road, at some distance, during the battle, and as soon as 
the result of it was known they fled in the most cowardly way in every 
direction, both dismayed and disappointed that they had no opportunity 
on this memorable day of murdering the stragglers, as was their custom 
on such occasions. I say 'memorable,' for during the war no action 
Dccurred which made so great a sensation in the country. 



70 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

But enough of this. Pitt undertook to mend the state of affairs, 
and in his famous speech, he said: "Among the great and known 
defects of Ireland, one of the most prominent features was its want 
of industry and of capital. How were those wants to be supplied but 
by blending more closely with Ireland the industry and capital 
of Great Britain ? " Of course he made his bid for the Catholics. 
The concessions they sought, he said, could not be made to the 
Catholics while Ireland remained a separate kingdom; but .the 
question of their emancipation could be agitated safely in an united 
imperial Parliament. When he argued that Irish dissensions and ignor- 
ance were to be put an end to by the union, he forgot to tell the English 
Commons that both were the creation of the British government. He 
admitted that the absenteeism sure to be caused or increased by the 
union might be some injury to Ireland ; but it would be more than com- 
pensated by the numerous advantages that would result from that bene- 
ficial measure. As for looking on the union as a means of subjecting 
Ireland to a foreign yoke, any such idea was monstrous. The two invin- 
cible nations were to be amalgamated on terms of the most perfect 
equality. It is needless to say that "the silent refutation of time" has 
overthrown this fabric of ingenious sophistry. After the experience of 
near seventy-two years of union, Ireland is almost the only country in 
Europe that has retrograded in prosperity. Mr Mitchel. giving a sum- 
mary of Pitt's great speech, says: "All this looks to-day like cruel and 
deadly irony. It was with the most severe gravity, however, that Mr. 
Pitt enumerated all the great blessings which would flow from the union 
to Ireland. If England was to benefit by it, he did not seem to be 
aware of that circumstance — did not think of it apparently at all ; so 
much absorbed was he by the generous thought of binding up the bleed- 
ing wounds of Ireland and whispering peace to her distracted spirit." 

That most brilliant and versatile Irishman, Richard Brinsley Sheri- 
dan, opposed the union strenuously in the English House of Commons. 
"Let no suspicion," said he, "be entertained that we gained our object 
by intimidation or corruption. Let our union be a union of affection 
and attachment, of plain dealing and free will. Let it be a union of 
mind and spirit as well as of interest and power. Let it not resemble 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'CONNELL. 71 

those Irish marriages which commenced in fraud and were consummated 
by force. Let us not commit a brutal rape on the independence of Ire- 
land, when, by tenderness of behavior, we may have her the wi-lling part- 
ner of our fate. The state of Ireland did not admit such a marriage. 
Her bans ought not to be published to the sound of the trumpet with 
an army of forty thousand men. She was not qualified for hymeneal 
rites, when the grave and the prison held so large a share of her pop- 
ulation." 

The furious Clare determined to repress the tumultuous rejoicings of 
the Dublin populace. He had the privy council hastily summoned to- 
gether, and impressed on them the necessity of making a salutary example 
in the usual government style. A party of soldiers silently sallied forth. 
They were commanded by a mere sergeant. They had no civil magis- 
trate along with them. They arrived in Capel street, where the populace 
were indulging in loud huzzas for their friends. There and then, with- 
out any reading of the Riot Act, without any tumult to justify the inter- 
ference o+* troops, without being attacked, these soldiers fired a volley of 
ball-cartridge into the crowd. A few were killed and wounded. Among 
the lulled were a woman and a boy. A man was shot dead at the feet 
of Mr. P. Hamilton, the king's proctor of the admiralty, who was merely 
amusing himself by looking on at the illumination and other signs of 
popular joy. This incident gives a fair specimen of the system of ter- 
ror adopted by the government to carry through the accursed Act of 
Union. 

The cold-blooded Castlereagh, however, chiefly relied on government 
patronage and corruption. Even felons in jails were promised pardon 
if they would consent to sign union petitions. Lord Cornwallis himself 
set out on an experimental tour through the parts of the country where 
the nobles and gentry were most likely to entertain him, and where he 
had the best chance of meeting corporations at public dinners. Ireland, 
in short, was canvassed. The memoirs of this viceroy prove that he was 
a willing instrument of intimidation and the vilest corruption. In his 
letters he sometimes feels, or affects to feel, scorn for the persons cor- 
rupted by him ; he even occasionally feels his toe itching to kick some 
nobleman at once rude and corrupt. He affects not to like his job ; still, 
he never shrinks from doing Pitt's dirtv work. He labors hard to pro- 



72 HE LIFE OF DAjSLEL O'CONNELL. 



cure the fifty majority, without which that minister says the measure 
should not be pressed. This man, Cornwallis, has got an unmerited 
reputation with some for honor and humanity. Certainly, he somewhat 
relaxed the cruelties that had stained Camden's administration ; he does 
not seem to have been altogether destitute of a sense of justice. The 
Orangemen, indeed, because he showed any mercy at all to rebels, nick- 
named him " Croppy Corney." However, at best, he was, like nearly all 
his predecessors, when occasion required, a corrupter, if not himself 
corrupt — false, unscrupulous, tyrannical. The marquis of Downshire 
soon experienced this. Seeing the determination of the government to 
carry the union by any and every means, foul or fair, this nobleman, the 
venerable earl of Charlemont, and "William Brabazon Ponsonby, member 
for Kilkenny county, sent circulars abroad calling on the people to ex- 
press their sentiments on the question of the legislative union in peti- 
tions to Parliament. In consequence of this step, the marquis of Down- 
shire was at once dismissed from the government of his county and the 
colonelcy of the Koyal Downshire regiment of twelve hundred men ; his 
name, too, was erased from the list of privy councillors. In spite of all 
the efforts of the government, however, countless petitions poured in 
against the union — scarcely any for it. Protestants and Catholics 
indiscriminately signed the anti-union petitions. Most of the Orange- 
men, indeed, were for the union ; the grand master aud grand secretary, 
who were both members of Parliament, voted for it. I have already 
intimated that the government had succeeded in winning over to their 
side a large proportion of the Catholic aristocracy and clergy. Others 
were simply indifferent to the national cause. Mr. Plowden accounts for 
this by "the severities and indignities practiced upon them after the rebel- 
lion by many of the Orange party, and the offensive confusion in the use 
of the terms papist and rebel producing fresh soreness in the minds of 
many." Mr. Mitchel is not satisfied with this way of accounting for 
their union proclivities. He remarks very justly that if the Catholics 
did see some Orangemen in the national ranks, "they also saw there all 
their old and tried friends and advocates." Probably the true method 
of accounting for the course pursued in this crisis of the nation's destiny 
by the Catholic clergy and aristocracy is suggested to our minds by tbs 
following passages from the writings of Sir Jonah Barrington : 



THE LIFE OF DANIE^ O'CONNELL. 7$ 



" The viceroy knew mankind too well to dismiss the Catholics w th- 
Dut a comfortable conviction of their certain emancipation; he tinned 
to them the honest side of his countenance ; the priests bowed before 
the soldierly condescensions of a starred veteran. The titular arch- 
bishop was led to believe he would instantly become a real prelate, and, 
before the negotiation concluded, Dr. Troy was consecrated a decided 
unionist, and was directed to send pastoral letters to his colleagues to 
promote it." 

Again, Sir Jonah informs us that " some of the persons assuming to 
themselves the title of Catholic leaders sought an audience in order to 
inquire from Marquis Cornwallis, ' What would be the advantage to the 
Catholics if an union should happen to be effected in Ireland ?■' 

"Mr. Bellew (brother to Sir Patrick Bellew), Mr. Lynch, and some 
others, had several audiences with the viceroy; the Catholic bishops 
were generally deceived into the most disgusting subservience ; rewards 
were not withheld ; Mr. Bellew was to be appointed a county judge, but 
that being found impracticable, he got a secret pension, which he has 
now enjoyed for thirty- two years." 

But all the Catholics of position and intelligence were not weak and 
base enough to yield to these insidious and soul-corrupting influences. 
¥ov example, the trading and commercial class of Catholics in Dublin 
were violently hostile to the bare idea of the union. On the 13th of 
January, 1800, a meeting of the Catholic citizens of Dublin was held in 
the hall of the Royal Exchange to protest against the union. This meet- 
ing is memorable as being the occasion on which Daniel O'Connell com- 
menced his political career. On this day he delivered his first speech at a 
public meeting. I shall presently give the speech in full, because it is 
specially interesting to mark how his sentiments in the opening scenes of 
his public life entirely correspond with his most cherished opinions at life's 
close. As his last and greatest movement was the repeal "agitation," so 
this his earliest effort was to save the legislative independence of his coun- 
try. His son tells us that this meeting in 1800 was mainly " got up by 
his efforts." His friends, including his uncle Maurice, were all opposed to 
his putting himself forward in any public struggle. It was difficult for 
a lawyer at that time to rise in his profession unless he were willing to 
be the parasite and the slave of the government. O'Connell saw clearly 



74 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



enough that strong reasons existed which counselled him to keep himself 
out of political strife ; and that, by engaging in the turmoil of politics, 
he would expose himself to many disadvantages and obstacles, if not 
absolute dangers. But, at the same time, he saw just as clearly that a 
crisis in the affairs of his country and his co-religionists had arrived, 
when, if he were a true Irishman, all mere prudential considerations 
should be flung to the winds, and his only course should be to step 
Doldly into the arena. The "natural leaders" of the Catholics, as they 
were styled, hung back timidly, or they were bribed or deluded into a 
short-sighted acquiescence in the fatal measure. The bulk of the Cath- 
olics, though sound in their views on the vital question of legislative 
independence, were unaccustomed to act in concert. It was absolutely 
necessary, then, that some one should come forward and show them the 
way to maintain the reputation and the independence of the Catholic 
body. Fortunately, the requisite man for the hour was there to do his 
duty. Fortunately, too, that' man was the promising young barrister 
Daniel O'Connell. 

The first impulse of the tyrannical Clare was to prevent the meet- 
ing by that military violence which was still of every-day occurrence, 
although the alleged necessity for it had ceased with the extinction, 
more than a year previously, of the last embers of the civil war. How- 
ever, it was finally resolved to suffer the meeting to proceed. Still, in 
the early part of the proceedings, a panic was created by the arriva] of 
Major Sirr at the head of a band of soldiers. The rumor of the medi- 
tated interference on the part of government had already got abroad. 
When, then, the measured tramp of the soldiery was heard, and the red 
uniforms became visible under the portico of the Exchange, which faces 
Parliament street, when they halted suddenly and brought their mus- 
kets to the flag-stones with a clash, a sensible diminution took place on 
the outskiits of the meeting, However, the exertions and exhortations 
of O'Connell and other gentlemen present rallied the crowd, so that the 
main body of the assemblage stood firm. O'Connell then advanced to 
parley with the redoubtable Sirr. 

"Let me see the resolutions," demanded that sinister-looking fund' 
tionary. 

" Here they are," said the chairman, Mr. Ambrose Moore. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 75 



The major scrutinized them closely. At last, evidently disappointed 
at the peace and good order and readiness to submit to law which cha- 
racterized the meeting, the baffled major threw down the resolutions and 
growled forth, " There is no harm in them." Reluctantly he suffered the 
meeting to proceed, and took himself and his myrmidons off. 

Then Counsellor O'Connell rose, and in the following short speem 
introduced the resolutions. He said "that the question of the union 
was confessedly one of the first magnitude and importance. Sunk, 
indeed, in more than criminal apathy must that Irishman be who could 
feel indifference on the subject. It was a measure to the consideration 
of which we were called by every illumination of the understanding and 
every feeling of the heart. There was, therefore, no necessity to apolo- 
gize for the introducing the discussion of the question amongst Irish- 
men ; but before he brought forward any resolution he craved permis- 
sion to make a few observations on the causes which produced the neces- 
sity of meeting as Cathodes — as a separate and distinct body. In doing 
so, he thought he would clearly show that they were justifiable in at 
length deviating from a resolution which they had hitherto formed. The 
enlightened mind of the Catholics had taught them the impolicy, the 
illiberality and the injustice of separating themselves on any occasion 
from the rest of the people of Ireland. The Catholics had therefore 
more than once resolved — and they had wisely resolved — under the cir- 
cumstances of the present day and the systematic calumnies flung at the 
Catholic character, never more to appear before the public in political 
discussion as a mere sect — as a distinct and separate body ; but they 
did not, they could not, then foresee the unfortunately existing circum- 
stances of this moment. They could not then foresee that they would be 
reduced to the necessity either of submitting to the disgraceful imputa- 
tion of approving of a measure as detestable to them as it was ruinous 
to their country, or once again, and he trusted for the last time, of com- 
ing forward as a distinct body. 

" This resolution which they had entered into gave rise to an exten- 
sive and injurious misrepresentation, and it was daringly asserted by the 
advocates of the union — daringly and insolently asserted — that the Ro- 
man Catholics of Ireland were friends to the measure of union, and silent 
allies to that conspiracy formed against the name, the interests and the 



76 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



liberties of Ireland. This libel on the Catholic character was strength- 
ened by the partial declarations of some mean and degenerate members 
of the communion, wrought upon by corruption or by fear, and, unfortu- 
nately, it was received with a too general credulity. 

" There was no man present but was acquainted with the industry 
with which it was circulated that the Catholics were favorable to the 
union, a measure which would annihilate the name of their country. In 
vain did multitudes of that body, in different capacities, express their 
disapprobation of the measure. In vain did they concur with others of 
their fellow-subjects in expressing their abhorrence of it, as freemen or 
freeholders, electors of counties or inhabitants of cities; still, the cal- 
umny was repeated. It was printed in journal after journal; it was 
published in union pamphlet after pamphlet ; it was uttered in speech 
after speech; it was circulated with activity in private companies; it 
was boldly and loudly proclaimed in public assemblies. How this clam- 
or was raised and how it was supported was manifest — the motives of 
it were apparent. 

"In vain had the Catholics (individually) endeavored to resist the 
torrent. Their future efforts, as individuals, would be equally vain and 
fruitless ; they must oppose it collectively. 

" In the speeches and pamphlets of anti-unionists it was rather admit- 
ted than denied, so that at length the Catholics themselves were obliged 
to break through the resolution which they had formed, in order to guard 
against misrepresentation, for the purpose of repelling this worst of mis- 
representations. To refute a calumny directed against them as a sect, 
they were obliged to come forward as a sect, and in the face of their 
country to disavow the base conduct imputed to them, and to declare 
that the assertion of their being favorably inclined to the measure of a 
legislative incorporation with Great Britain was a slander the most vile 
— a libel the most false, scandalous and wicked — that ever was directed 
against the character of an individual or a people. 

" There was another reason why they should come forward as a dis- 
tinct class — a reason which he confessed had made the greatest impres- 
sion upon his feelings. Not content with falsely asserting that the 
Catholics favored the extinction of Ireland, this their supposed inclina- 
tion was attributed to the foulest motives — motives which were most 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 77 

repugnant to their judgments and most abhorrent to their hearts. It 
was said that the Catholics were ready to sell their country for a price 
or, what was still more depraved, to abandon it, on account of the unfor- 
tunate animosities which the wretched temper of the times had pro- 
duced. Can they remain silent under so horrible a calumny? This 
calumny was flung on the whole body — it was incumbent on the whole 
body to come forward and contradict it ; yes, they will show every friend 
of Ireland that the Catholics are incapable of selling their country ; they 
will loudly declare that if their emancipation were offered for their con- 
sent to the measure — even were emancipation after the union a benefit 
— they would reject it with prompt indignation." [Tins sentiment, we are 
told, met with approbation.) "Let us show to Ireland that we have 
nothing in view but her good ; nothing in our hearts but the desire of 
mutual forgiveness, mutual toleration and mutual affection; in fine, 
let every man who feels with me proclaim, that, if the alternative were 
offered him of union, or the re-enactment of the penal code in all its 
pristine horrors, he would prefer without hesitation the latter as the 
lesser and more sufferable evil ; that he would boldly meet a proscrip- 
tion and oppression which would be the testimonies of our virtues ; that 
he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protestants of 
Ireland, who have already liberated him, than lay his country at the 
feet of foreigners*" [This sentiment, John O'Connell assures us, was met 
with much and marked approbation.) "Yes, I know — I do know, that 
although exclusive advantages may be ambiguously held forth to the Irish 
Catholic, to seduce him from the sacred duty which he owes his country, 
I know that the Catholics of Ireland still remember that they have a 
country, and that they will never accept of any advantages as a sect 
which would debase and destroy them as & people." 

In conclusion, he observed that, "with regard to the union, so much 
had been said, so much had been written on the subject, that it was 
impossible any man should not before now have formed an opinion of it. 
He would not trespass on their attention in repeating arguments which 
they had already heard, and topics which they had already considered ; 
but if there was any man present who could be so far mentally degraded 
as to consent to the extinction of the liberty, the constitution, and even 
the name of Ireland, he would call on him not to leave the direction and 



78 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

management of his commerce and property to strangers, over whom he 
could have no control.' 7 He then moved the following resolutions, which 
being seconded, passed unanimously. John O'Connell tells us that 
these resolutions were drawn up by O'Connell himself. On this account, 
and because this was his first public meeting, I give them in full; 
though, I must remark, that elsewhere it is stated that these resolutions 
were drawn up by the celebrated John Philpot Curran. Be this as it 
may, here they are : 

"Royal Exchange, Dublin, January 13, 1800. 

" At a numerous and respectable meeting of the Roman Catholics of 
the city of Dublin, convened pursuant to public notice, Ambrose Moore, 
Esq., in the chair — 

"Resolved, That we are of opinion that the proposed incorporate union 
of the legislature of Great Britain and Ireland is, in fact, an extinction 
of the liberty of this country, which would be reduced to the abject con- 
dition of a province, surrendered to the mercy of the minister and legis- 
lature of another country, to be bound by their absolute will and taxed 
at their pleasure by laws in the making of which this country would 
have no efficient participation whatsoever. 

"Resolved, That we are of opinion that the improvement of Ireland for 
the last twenty years, so rapid beyond example, is to be ascribed wholly 
to the independency of our legislature, so gloriously asserted in the year 
1782, by virtue of our Parliament co-operating with the generous recom- 
mendation of our most gracious and benevolent sovereign, and backed 
by the spirit of our people, and so solemnly ratified by both kingdoms 
as the only true and permanent foundation of Irish prosperity and Brit- 
ish connection. 

"Resolved, That we are of opinion that if that independency should 
ever be surrendered, we must as rapidly relapse into our former depres- 
sion and misery, and that Ireland must inevitably lose, with her liberty, 
all that she has acquired in wealth and industry and civilization. 

"Resolved, That we are firmly convinced that the supposed advantages 
of such a surrender are unreal and delusive, and can never arise in fact ; 
and that even if they should arise, they would be only the bounty of the 
master to the slave, held by his courtesy, and resumable at his pleasure. 

"Resolved, That, having heretofore determined not to come forward any 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 79 



more in the distinct character of Catholics, but to consider our claims 
and our cause not as those of a sect, but as involved in the general fate 
of our country, we now think it right, notwithstanding such determina- 
tion, to publish the present resolutions, in order to undeceive our fellow- 
subjects, who may have been led to believe, by a false representation, 
that we are capable of giving any concurrence whatsoever to so foul 
and fatal a project; to assure them that we are incapable of sacrificing 
our common country to either pique or pretension ; and that we are of 
opinion that this deadly attack upon the nation is the great call of na- 
ture, of country and posterity upon Irishmen of all descriptions and per- 
suasions, to every constitutional and legal resistance ; and that we sa- 
credly pledge ourselves to persevere in obedience to that call as long sis 
we have life. 

"Signed, by order, James Ryan, Sec." 

When these resolutions had passed unanimously, the meeting broke 
up. Such was Daniel O'Connell's first appearance in public as a polit- 
ical orator and a patriot. It would appear from a statement made by 
Mr. Daunt that O'Connell never wrote a speech beforehand. Of this 
his maiden speech, however, he wrote the heads, a mode of preparation 
not unusual with him during the subsequent part of his oratorical career. 
After the close of the anti-union meeting he gave a full report of his first 
speech to the " Dublin Evening Post." O'Connell used to contrast his 
natural embarrassment in delivering this maiden effort of his faculty for 
swaying popular masses by eloquence with the matchless ease and self- 
possession which constant practice in public speaking and long expe- 
rience of the varying tempers of audiences bestowed upon him later 
in life. " My face," he would say, " glowed and my ears tingled at the 
sound of my own voice, but I got more courage as I went on." O'Con- 
nell also declared repeatedly that this maiden speech of his, denouncing 
as it did the accursed Act of Union, should be looked on as the text- book 
of his entire political life. 

Here is his own account of the state of his feelings in 1800, while 
the struggle for and against the union was raging: "The year of the 
union I was travelling through the mountain-district from Killarney to 
Kenmare ; my heart was heavy at the loss that Ireland had sustained, and 



80 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the day was wild and gloomy. That desert district, too, was congenial 
to impressions of solemnity and sadness. There was not a human hab- 
itation to be seen for many miles; black, giant clouds sailed slowly 
through the sky and rested on the tops of the huge mountains : my soul 
felt dreary, and I had many wild and Ossianic inspirations as I traversed 
the bleak solitudes. 

" It was the union that first stirred me up to come forward in politics. 
My uncle Maurice was scarcely pleased at my taking a public part; 
not that he approved of the union, but politics appeared to him to be 
fraught with great peril ; and he would have preferred my appearing on 
some question which would, in his opinion, have more directly concerned 
the Catholics." 

Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell if he was in Dublin when the union 
passed ? 

"Yes," O'Connell answered, "but there was less excitement than 
you would imagine ; the hatred which all classes (except the small gov- 
ernment clique) bore to the measure had settled down into sulky 
despondency. I was maddened when I heard the bells of St. Patrick's 
ringing out a joyful peal for Ireland's degradation, as if it was a glorious 
national festival. My blood boiled, and I vowed, on that morning, that 
the foul dishonor should not last if I could ever put an end to it." 

But this is anticipating. It is necessary that I should complete my 
sketch of the passing of the fatal act. During the whole of the year '99, 
the government made superhuman efforts to purchase a majority in 
Parliament and to intimidate the nation. Some members were directly 
-bought ; others, for a consideration, accepted the escheatorships of Mun- 
ster, Leinster or Connaught. These (somewhat analogous to the stew- 
ardships of the Chiltern Hundreds in England) were nominal offices 
with salaries of forty shillings, on acceptance of which members should 
necessarily vacate their seats. The government would immediately fill 
the vacant seats with their partisans. Under-secretary Cooke was the 
immediate agent of corruption for Cornwallis and Castlereagh. Indeed, 
Castlereagh himself boldly and openly declared his determination to 
carry the measure by bribery, or, as he styled it, compensation for losses. 
To every nobleman who would return union members to Parliament he 
promised fifteen thousand pounds. Every member purchasing a seat 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 81 

was promised repayment of the purchase-money out of the Irish treasury. 
To all members of Parliament or others who should be losers by the 
union a full recompense for their losses was promised. One million five 
hundred thousand pounds were to be appropriated for this purpose. This 
sum, however, represents but a small portion of the bribery. O'Connell, 
in his grand speech in favor of repeal, delivered in the Dublin corpora- 
tion early in 1843, estimates the bribes paid out of the secret service- 
money at more than one million sterling. About forty new peerages 
were conferred as bribes. Eight thousand pounds, or an office worth 
two thousand pounds fer annum, was the price of a vote. Ten bishop- 
rics, one chief-justiceship, six puisne-judgeships, besides regiments and 
ships to officers of the army and navy, were given away. The amount 
of all this in money has been estimated at five million pounds. By 
means of these bribes, men who had made the most ostentatious display 
of patriotism at the banquet of one hundred and ten patriotic members, 
held at the close of the session of 1799 — men who had there spouted 
forth the most vehement patriotism, given strong anti-union toasts, 
vowed before God and man "war to the knife" against so pestilent a 
measure, sung anti-union songs of their own composition, — by means of 
these bribes, I say, certain noisy patriots of '99 were brought round to 
admit in 1800 the superior force of the minister's reasoning, and to sing 
songs in favor of the union. Just such a patriot was Mr. William Hand- 
cock, the member for Athlone. He received a large money-bribe. 
"But," says Barrington, "still he held out until title was added to the 
bribe ; his own conscience was not strong enough to resist the charge ; 
the vanity of his family lusted for nobility. He wavered, but he yielded ; 
his vows, his declaration, his song, all vanished before vanity, and the 
year 1800 saw Mr. Handcock of Athlone, Lprd Castlemaine." 

The strength of the opposition was the more easily undermined by 
the government from the heterogeneous nature of the elements composing 
it. Side by side in the ranks of the anti-unionists were reformers and 
enemies of reform; Catholic emancipationists and foes of the Catholic 
cause, even rabid Orangemen. Then men, who had hitherto supported 
the measures of the court, were now obliged reluctantly to submit to the 
leadership of the knot of talented men who had ever been hostile to the 
Castle. 



82 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Violent means of intimidation were also resorted to by the govern- 
ment. In Birr a meeting of magistrates and people was dispersed by 
military force. A column of troops, with four pieces of cannon in front 
and matches lighted, approached the session-house where the meeting 
was held, prepared to attack it. Major Rogers, the commander of the 
troops, said that he waited but for one word from the sheriff that he 
might blow them to atoms. Many other meetings were prevented by 
simple "dread of grape-shot." Anti-union addresses were stigmatized 
by the hireling scribes of the government faction as seditious and dis- 
loyal, " while," as Sir Jonah Barrington tells us, "those of the compelled, 
the bribed and the culprit were printed and circulated by every means 
that the treasury and the influence of the government could effect." 
Yet, in spite of all the terrorism that prevailed, seven hundred thou- 
sand persons petitioned against union ; and all the seductions of the 
government could only persuade three thousand to sign petitions in 
favor of the measure, and of these three thousand, most were govern- 
ment officials or prisoners in the jails. 

At a dinner-party at Lord Castlereagh's house, in Merrion Square, Dub- 
lin, about twenty Irish members of Parliament, of what were then termed 
"righting families," were brought together. The dinner was exquisite. The 
choicest vintages of Champagne and Madeira sparkled on the table. After 
dinner, when the guests had become sufficiently exhilarated, and many loyal 
and joyous toasts had been sent round amid great mirth and flashes of jo- 
vial wit and humor, the convivial but at the same time astute and polished 
Sir John Blaquiere (afterwards, for his services in helping to carry the 
union, Lord de Blaquiere) proposed " a gentlemanly, convivial, fighting 
conspiracy," as Barrington terms it, of unionist members, to be always- 
on hand during the ensuing session, equally ready to make a House or 
to fasten a quarrel, should it seem expedient to do so, on any obnoxious 
member of the opposition. After affecting " some coquetry, lest this 
idea should seem to have originated with him," Lord Castlereagh 
assented to the strange proposal. Immediately "one of his lordship's 
prepared accessories (as if it were a new thought) proposed, humor- 
ously, to have a dinner for twenty or thirty every day in one of the 
committee chambers, where they could be always at hand to make up a 
House, or for any emergency which should call for an unexpected rein- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 83 

forcement during any part of the discussion." This novel idea, so whim- 
sical and humorous, was eagerly embraced. "Wit and puns began to 
accompany the bottle." Under-secretary Cooke, with nods and smirks, 
began to hint at lucrative official rewards for all the company. " Sir 
John Blaquiere pleasantly observed that, at all events, they would be 
sure of a good Cook at their dinners. After much wit and many flashes 
of convivial bravery, the meeting separated after midnight, fully resolved 
to eat, drink, speak and fight for Lord Castlereagh." (Barrington.) The 
preparations of the government for the coming struggle might now be 
deemed complete. 

The last session of the Irish Parliament began on the 15th of Jan- 
uary, 1800. ]So reference was made to the union in the viceroy's speech. 
Sir Lawrence Parsons, after a powerful oration, moved an amendment to 
the address declaratory of the resolution of Parliament to preserve the 
settlement of '82 and maintain the independence of Ireland. Lord Cas- 
tlereagh commenced the bullying system, and spoke contemptuously of 
the arguments of Sir Lawrence. A fierce debate followed, in which Pon- 
sonby, Bushe and Plunket distinguished themselves on the patriot side. 
Mr. Egan was speaking warmly against the union, when a whisper began 
to run through the House. The name of Grattan, who, since his seces- 
sion from Parliament, had been an invalid and most of the time away 
from Ireland trying to recruit his broken health, was mentioned. But 
an expression of incredulity was visible on the faces of nearly all who 
were present. The ministerialists even smiled derisively. Presently, 
Mr. George Ponsonby and Arthur Moore stood up, and left the House. 
Suddenly, along College Green a tremendous shout arose; an instant 
after it was taken up within the walls of the Parliament House, and 
rang through the corridors. The doors of the chamber of the Commons 
are flung wide open. The inspired countenance of Henry Grattan is 
seen once more. His emaciated form and his eye, kindling preternat- 
urally as he surveys the theatre of his former glory on the eve of being 
closed for ever, give him an unearthly aspect. As he totters feebly for- 
ward towards the table, supported by Ponsonby and Moore, the whole 
House rises respectfully; cheer follows cheer. There are tears in the 
eyes of many. Even the ministerialists feel themselves compelled to do 
him honor. Castlereagh himself, cold as he usually is, rises at the head 



84 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of the whole treasury bench, bows with stately courtesy, and remains 
standing till Grattan has taken the oaths and his seat. 

Grattan had just been returned, almost against his will, for the close 
borough of Wicklow, which belonged to Mr. Tighe. When the vacancy 
occurred, the government withheld the writ as long as possible, in order 
to keep Grattan out of Parliament till the discussion should be past. 
In fact, it was only on the day of the opening of the session that the 
writ reached the returning officer. Through the exertions of Grattan' s 
friends the election was held at once. Their energy was such that voters 
enough were got together to return him before midnight. The return 
reached Dublin by 5 o'clock in the morning. Friends of Grattan has- 
tened to the house of the proper officer ; he was forced out of bed and 
made to present the writ to Parliament before seven, while the fierce 
debate on the union was still going on. Meanwhile, Mr. Tighe had 
ridden from Wicklow to Dublin, and called at Grattan' s house in Baggot 
street. ""Will they not let me die in peace?" Grattan exclaimed 
when he heard of Mr. Tighe' s arrival. But his brave-hearted wife tells 
him at once that "he must get up immediately and go down to the 
House." In his old volunteer uniform, with a brace of loaded pistols in 
his pocket, he is borne to the House in a sedan chair. His wife looks 
anxiously after him. When a friend assures her that, in the event of a 
personal quarrel with the bravoes of the Castle, others would take the 
part of Grattan, she stoutly replies, like a true Geraldine, "My husband 
cannot die better than in the defence of his country." 

Bully Egan makes no attempt to resume his harangue. Willingly 
he gives way to the great orator. And now that he is about 

"To thunder again those iron words that thrill like the clash of spears," 

Grattan feels the glow of his former energy reviving within his wearied 
heart and wasted frame. A smile brightens his face. Still, when he 
attempts to rise, he finds himself unable to stand at first ; he is obliged 
to ask permission to speak sitting. His soul, rising supreme over his 
bodily frailty, soon bears him rushing along into the full swing, tide 
and tempest, so to speak, of his grandest oratory. For two hours his 
eloquence blazes before the House with unprecedented fire and 
splendor : 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 35 

" Sir, the gentleman who spoke last but one (Mr. Fox) has spoken 
the pamphlet of the English minister (Pitt) — I answer that minister. 
He has published two celebrated productions, m both of which he 
declares his intolerance of the constitution of Ireland. He concurs with 
the men whom he has hanged in thinking the constitution a grievance, 
and differs from them in the remedy only ; they proposing to substitute 
a republic, and he proposing to substitute the yoke of the British Par- 
liament — the one turns rebel to the king, the minister a rebel to the 
constitution. ... 

" I will put this question to my country. I will suppose her at the 
bar, and I will ask her : Will you fight for a union as you would for a 
constitution ? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons who, in the 
last century, took away your trade, and in the present your constitution, 
as for that King, Lords and Commons who have restored both ? Well, 
the minister has destroyed this constitution; to destroy is easy; the 
edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, 
but ask only minutes to precipitate ; and as the fall of both is an effort 
of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength ; a pickaxe and a 
common laborer will do the one — a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked 
minister the other. 

"The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the 
inheritance of this country for six hundred years; that modus tenendi 
parliamentum {method of holding 'parliament), which lasted and out- 
lasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the 
systematic falsehood ; the condition of our connection — yes, the consti- 
tution he destroys is one of the pillars of the British Empire. He may 
walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates the more 
must he admire ; such a one as had cost England of money millions and 
of blood a deluge, cheaply and nobly expended ; whose restoration had 
cost Ireland her noblest efforts, and was the habitation of her loyalty— 
we are accustomed to behold the kings of these countries in the keeping 
of Parliament — I say of her loyalty as well as of her liberty, where she 
had hung up the sword of the volunteer — her temple of fame as well as 
of freedom — where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in 
modest security and in a long repose. 

"I have done with the pile which the minister batters; I come to 



86 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



the Babel which he builds; and as he throws down without a principle, 
so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls a union, 
and to this his fabric there are two striking objections: fbst, it is no 
union — it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the Catholics ; 
secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish legislatures — that is to say, a 
merger of the Irish Parliament, and incurs every objection to a union, 
without obtaining the only object which a union professes — it is an 
extinction of the constitution and an exclusion of the people. Well, he 
has overlooked the people as he has overlooked the sea. I say he 
excludes the Catholics and he destroys their best chance of admission — 
the relative consequence. Thus he reasons : That hereafter, in a course 
of time (he does not say when), if they behave themselves (he does not say 
how), they may see their subjects submitted to a course of discussion 
(he does not say with what result or determination) ; and as the ground 
for this inane period, in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he 
did promise much, at so remote a period he could perform nothing, 
unless he, like the evil he has accomplished, be immortal — for this inane 
sentence, in which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or 
suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, he exhibits no other ground than 
the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a union, 
which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it destroys 
the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and thus they become 
admissible because they cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, 
their brilliant expectation. 'You were,' say his advocates, and so im- 
ports his argument, ' before the union as three to one ; you will be by 
the union as one to four.' Thus he founds their hopes of political power 
on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of 
their body and the nonenity of their country the pillars of their future 
ambition. . . . 

"The minister has not done with bribes; whatever economy he 
shows in argument, here he has been generous in the extreme. Parson, 
priest (I think one of his advocates hints the Presbyterians) are not for- 
gotten ; and now the mercantile body are all to be bribed, that all may 
be ruined. He holds out commercial benefits for political annihilation ; 
he offers you an abundance of capital, but first he taxes it away ; he takes 
away a great portion of the landed capital of the country by the necessary 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 87 

operation of union ; he will give you, however, commercial capital in its 
place ; but first he will give you taxes. It seems it is only necessary to 
break the barriers of liberty and the tides of commerce will flow in of 
course; take away her rival in landed capital, and then commercial 
capital advances without fear. Commerce only wants weight — i. e., taxes 
— it seems, in order to run with new spirit. He not only finds commerce 
in the retreat of landed capital, but he finds corn also. His whole 
speech is a course of surprises ; the growth of excision, the resource of 
incumbrance and harvests sown and gathered by the absence of the pro- 
prietors of the soil and of their property. All these things are to come. 
When ? He does not tell you. Where ? He does not tell you. You 
take his word for all this. I have heard of a banker's bill of exchange, 
Bank of England's notes, Bank of Ireland's notes, but a prophet's prom- 
issory note is a new traffic ; all he gets from Ireland is our solid loss ; all 
he promises are visionary, distant and prophetic advantages. He sees 
— I do not — British merchants and British capital sailing to the prov- 
inces of Connaught and Munster ; there they settle in great multitudes, 
themselves and families. He mentions not what description of manu- 
facturers — who from Birmingham, who from Manchester; no matter, he 
cares not ; he goes on asserting, and asserting with great ease to him- 
self, and without any obligation to fact. Imagination is the region in 
which he delights to disport; where he is to take your Parliament, 
where he is to take away your final judicature, where he is to increase 
your tases, where he is to get an Irish tribute, there he is a plain, direct, 
matter-of-fact man ; but where he is to pay you for all this, there he is 
poetic and prophetic ; no longer a financier, but an inspired accountant. 
Fancy gives her wand ; Amalthea takes him by the hand ; Ceres is in 
her train. . . . 

"He (the minister) proposes to you to substitute the British Parlia- 
ment in your place, to destroy the body that restored your liberties, and 
to restore that body which destroyed them. Against such a proposition, 
were I expiring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last breath and 
record my dying testimony." 

But all this eloquence was unavailing. The ministers, indeed, became 
savage, and Castlereagh incited one of the Castle bravoes, Isaac Corry, 
to make a truculent attack on Grattan, which he was too much exhausted 



88 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



by his unwonted exertions to notice on that occasion. The government 
defeated the motion of Sir Lawrence Parsons by a bribed majority of 
forty-two. Even Plowden, a decided unionist, admits the profligate 
means by which this majority was obtained, and that the minister had 
but slender grounds for triumphing in it ; also that it was far from rep- 
resenting " the genuine sense of the independent part of that House and 
of the people of Ireland." In the Lords, about the same time, Clare 
spoke that able and celebrated, but unscrupulous, libel on his country- 
men, to which Grattan afterwards wrote an answer. " His idea," said 
G-rattan, " was to make the Irish history a calumny against their ances- 
tors, in order to disfranchise their posterity." 

On the 5th of February Grattan ably argued against the union on 
constitutional grounds, giving copious quotations from the greatest 
writers on political science and government and jurisprudence, in support 
of his opinion that Parliament was incompetent to pass such an act. 
He says, prophetically, " The project of union appears to me to be noth- 
ing less than the surrender of the constitution. It reduces the Commons 
of Ireland to one-third, leaving the Parliament of England their present 
proportion ; it reduces the Commons of Ireland, I say, to one-third ; it 
transfers that third to another country, where it is merged and lost in 
the superior numbers of another Parliament. He strikes off two-thirds, 
and makes the remaining English. Those Irish members residing in 
England will be nominally Irish representatives, but they will cease to be 
Irishmen. They will find England the seat of their abode, of their 
action, of their character, and will find, therefore, the great principles of 
action — namely, sympathy and fame — influencing them no longer in favor 
of their own country, but prepollent motives to forget Ireland, to look up 
to England, or rather the court of England, exclusively for countenance, for 
advancement and for honors, as the centre from which they circulate and 
to which they tend. 

" I therefore maintain that the project of a union is nothing less than 
to annul the Parliament of Ireland, or to transfer the legislative authority 
to the people of another country. To such an act the minister main- 
tains the Irish Parliament to be competent, for, in substance, he main- 
tains it to be omnipotent. I deny it ; such an act in the Parliament, 
without the authority of the people, is a breach of trust. Parliament ia 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 89 



not the proprietor, but the trustee, and the people the proprietor, and 
not the property. Parliament is called to make laws, not to elect law- 
makers." 

He fortifies these views by the high authority of Locke, Puffendorf, 
Hooker, Mr. Lechmere, Sir Joseph Jekyl, Edmund Burke, Lord Boling- 
broke and Junius, and he concludes a powerful argumentative speech 
with the following noble words: "The question is not now such as occu- 
pied you of old — not old Poyning's, not peculation, not plunder, not an 
embargo, not a Catholic bill, not a reform bill : it is your being — it is 
more — it is your life to come, whether you will go with the Castle at 
your head to the tomb of Charlemont and the volunteers" (Ckarlemont 
had died recently, and had been succeeded by his son Francis) "and erase 
his epitaph, or Whether your children shall go to your graves saying, 
' A venal, a military court attacked the liberties of the Irish, and here 
lie the bones of the honorable dead men who saved their country!' 
Such an epitaph is a nobility which the king cannot give his slaves ; 
it is a glory which the crown cannot give the king." 

The faction of the Castle now thirsted for Grattan's blood. On the 
14th of February the "right honorable" bravo, Corry, made another 
truculent personal attack on him. To this Grattan replied in one of the 
finest and most scathing invectives in any language: "Has the gentle- 
man done ? Has he completely done ?" thus Grattan bursts forth. " He 
was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. . . . 
I did not call him to order — why ? because the limited talents of some 
men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparlia- 
mentary. But before I sit down I will show him how to be severe and 
parliamentary at the same time. ... I know the difficulty the right 
honorable gentleman labored under when he attacked me, conscious 
that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there 
is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not 
believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were 
made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do 
before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an 
honest man. 

"The right honorable gentleman has called me 'an unimpeached 
traitor.' I ask why not ' traitor ' unqualified by any epithet ? I will 



90 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

tell him ; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a coward, who 
raises his arm to strike, but has not the courage to give the blow. I 
will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he 
is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to 
be chancellor of the exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the 
privilege of Parliament and freedom of debate to the uttering language, 
which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. 
I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contempt- 
ible his speech; whether a privy counsellor or a parasite, my answer 
vould be a blow. . . . 

" The right honorable member has told me I deserted a profession 
where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I 
mistake not, that gentleman endeavored to obtain those rewards by the 
same means; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for 
those of a parasite and a pander. He fled from the labor of study to 
flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlor a better 
sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts ; the house of 
a great man a more convenient way to power and to place ; and that it 
was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends than 
for a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients. . . . 

"The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country after 
exciting rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No such 
thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I 
left the kingdom, and I could not have returned without taking a part. 
On the one side there was the camp of the rebel, on the other the camp 
of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the 
constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rises 
against the government should have suffered, but I missed on the scaf- 
fold the right honorable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms 
against the constitution. The right honorable gentleman belonged to 
one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel — I 
could not join the government — I could not join torture — I could not join 
half-hanging — I could not join free quarter — I could take part with 
neither. I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be 
active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety. 

•• Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me; I respect 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 91 

their opinions, but I keep my own ; and I think now, as I thought then, 
that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was infi- 
nitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister. 

" I have returned, not, as the right honorable member has said, to 
raise another storm — I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of 
gratitude to my country that conferred a great reward for past services, 
which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have 
returned to protect that constitution, of which I was the parent and the 
founder, from the assassination of such men as the honorable gentleman 
and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt — they are seditious — 
and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their 
country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, 
given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee 
of the Lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial. I dare 
accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman ; I defy the government ; 
I defy their whole phalanx ; let them come forth. I tell the ministers I 
will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shat- 
tered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House in defence of 
the liberties of my country." 

G-rattan and Corry both left the House immediately after the close 
of this terrible philippic. Lest he should be arrested and so prevented 
from fighting, Grattan kept away from home, but he tells us he sent for 
his favorite duelling-pistols. He had already refused to listen to a pro- 
posal for an amicable arrangement made to him by the Speaker, who 
had sent for him to his chamber (the House being at the time in com- 
mittee), Grattan remarking that he saw and had been for some time 
aware of a set made at him to pistol him off on that question. Next 
morning, in a field by the Dodder bank, not far from Ball's bridge, Grat- 
tan and Corry met to exchange shots. A crowd was present, all sym- 
pathizing with the great patriot. Suddenly there is a cry of "the 
sheriff." The antagonists are told to fire at once, without waiting for 
the regular formalities. When the sheriff and his myrmidons approach, 
General Cradock, Corry' s second, shoves that functionary into a ditch 
and holds him there while the duel takes place. The result of the first 
rapid fire is that Corry is wounded in the arm, while Grattan stands 
unscathed. Grattan tells us he could have killed Corry if he willed 



92 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



to do so. A second exchange of shots takes place; but this time Grat- 
tan fires in the air, while Cony, having discharged his pistol, falls bleed- 
ing on the ground. The populace cheer; there was reason to believe 
that, if any harm befel Grattan, Corry would have fallen a sacrifice to 
the popular fury. And now Grattan is hurried off the field by his friends. 
As he passes Corry he shakes hands Avith him. Years after Grattan is 
in Brighton. A man broken down in health and spirit knocks at his 
door. The members of Grattan' s family are disinclined to admit the 
strange visitor. At last Grattan himself opens the door, stretches forth 
his hand and warmly grasps that of the stranger, who, sick in body, is 
more bruised and sore in spirit from humiliations in the British senate, 
from remorse and vain regrets. Grattan' s kindness deeply affects Corry, 
for the visitor is Grattan' s old foe. This unmerited kindness stabs the 
worn-out and dying courtier to the heart. He crawls away. On this 
side of the grave they meet no more. 

Mr. Ponsonby's proposal that an address should be presented to the 
king, stating that twenty-six counties and various cities and towns had 
petitioned against the union, was insolently rejected. The proposals of 
Mr. Saurin and Sir John Parnell, that an appeal should be made to the 
people by a dissolution of Parliament, had no better fate. Still the 
patriots hoped against hope ; they fought the government inch by inch. 
On the 19th of March, Grattan delivered another splendid anti-union 
oration. Speaking of the advocates of the measure, he said, "that 
according to their doctrine, should the government of France, Bonaparte 
for instance, be able to corrupt a majority of the two Houses of the 
British Parliament, that majority is competent to transfer the powers 
of the British legislature to Paris." He argued that the numerous anti- 
union petitions showed that there was no real feeling of identification 
between the two nations. The peroration was splendid : " I might here 
appeal to the different branches of the constitution, which you are going 
to devote. To the Lords : will they burn their robes, overset the throne, 
disgrace their ancestors, disqualify their blood, and consent to become 
slaves with nicknames, instead of peers with privileges?" Indeed, the 
conduct of the less powerful lords, who had only Irish peerages, was 
absolutely suicidal. The Irish peers were only to be represented in the 
Parliament of the empire by four spiritual and twenty-eight temporal 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 93 

peers. The Irish lords, then, who could not get themselves chosen as rep- 
resentative peers, could have no voice as Irishmen in Parliament, for they 
were debarred by law from sitting in the House of Commons for Ireland. 
An English constituency, indeed, might send them to the lower House. 
Hence Mr. Speaker Foster complained that the article relating to the 
Irish peerage created a sort of mongrel peer — half lord, half commoner. 
He also pointed out as a natural consequence of the eligibility of Irish 
peers as members of the Commons for English constituencies, to which 
they were strangers (while absurdly and even monstrously they could 
not be chosen legislators where they had connections, property and dwell- 
ings), that, in order to solicit interest, these nobles would necessarily be- 
come absentees, and gradually cease all intimate acquaintance with their 
native land. Mr. Grattan, after appealing to the Lords, asks the Commons, 
who remember '82, "Will you violate the obsequies of our dead general 
and renounce publicly and deliberately for ever your constitution and 
renown ? ... Do not now scandalize your own professions on that occa- 
sion, as well as renounce your former achievements, and close a political 
life of seven hundred years by one monstrous, self-surrendering, self- 
debasing act of relinquishment, irretrievable, irrecoverable, flagitious 
and abominable." He even appeals to the king not to sink his house 
"to the level of other kings by corrupt and unconstitutional victories ob- 
tained over the liberties and charters of his subjects." It was the spirit 
of a free constitution, he says, "that in former times drove old Bourbon 
in battle; it was this that made His Majesty's subjects men, not slaves; 
and it is this which you are going in Ireland, along with the constitu- 
tion from whence it emanated, to extinguish for ever. 

" I conclude, in these moments — they seem to be the closing moments 
of your existence — by a supplication to that Power whom I tremble to 
name, that Power who has favored you for seven hundred years with the 
rights and image of a free government, and who has lately conducted 
you out of that desert where for a century you had wandered, that He 
will not desert you now, but will be pleased to permit our beloved consti- 
tution to remain a little longer among us, and interpose His mercy 
between the stroke of death and the liberties of the people." 

All was now gloom and terror in Dublin. The Houses of Parliament 
were constantly surrounded by bodies of soldiers, skilfully posted in Col- 



94 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

lege Green and in Dame and Westmoreland streets. This was by way 
of preserving the peace, but the real object was manifestly to crush or 
prevent the expression of popular feeling. The anti-unionists wanted 
unity of direction and organization. Cooke's persuasive powers were 
every day making fresh converts. The Catholic bishop of Kilkenny, Dr. 
Lanigan (like other Catholic prelates), and his clergy, sent in an address 
to the viceroy favorable to the union. This grievously pained the Cath- 
olic body. However, an amusing blunder in the servile document made 
them laugh till their sides ached. Cornwallis had a queer defect in one 
of his eyes : it was diminutive and always moving in some grotesque, 
nervous way. Unluckily for their reputation as adroit courtiers, Dr. 
Lanigan and his clergy had never seen His Excellency. Wherefore they 
oddly and awkwardly commenced their abject address in these somewhat 
inappropriate terms : " Tour Excellency has always kept a steady eye on 
the interests of Ireland." The marquis forgot to thank his right-reverend 
and reverend admirers for this graceful compliment. 

In the Lords everything went smoothly for the government. Two 
amendments to the act were carried by Chancellor Clare. One was to the 
effect that always, on the extinction of three Irish peerages, one might be 
created, till the number of Irish peers should be reduced to one hundred, 
after which a new one might be created in place of every peerage that 
should become extinct ; the other amendment declared that the quali- 
fications of Irish members in the United Parliament should be the same 
with those of the English members. In the last clays of March, after 
the articles of union had been separately argued and assented to, both 
Houses addressed the king in favor of the union of the two kingdoms. 
After this the business rested in the Irish Parliament, while the British 
Parliament was doing its share of the work so fatal to the liberties of 
Ireland. There was some opposition in the English Houses. Lord Hol- 
land opposed the measure in the Lords. In the Commons, Sheridan 
nobly fought the battle of his native country. The year before he had 
boldly said that " such an insult would not have been offered to her 
while her volunteers were in arms." This year his opposition to the 
baleful measure was fully as vigorous. He insisted that the people of 
Ireland were opposed to the measure. He denounced the corrupt means 
employed to carry it ; he asserted that no attempt had been made to deny 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELJ. 95 



the notorious fact, that sixty-five seats had been vacated to make places 
for men whose obsequiousness would not permit them to oppose the 
measure. It is pleasant to find our brilliant Sheridan " true to his sire- 
land " in this terrible crisis of her fate : "My country has claims upon me 
which I am not more proud to acknowledge than ready to liquidate to 
the full measure of my ability." This he said in the English Commons 
in '99. We find in Grattan' s Memoirs, by his son, vol. v., p. 68, the fol- 
lowing passage, in which an utterance most honorable to Sheridan occurs : 
"Unquestionably, Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh deserved to die. 
The popular execution of such state criminals would have been a 
national as well as a noble judicial sentence. 

" Some weak old women might have cried out ' Murder!' but it would 
have been the deed of a Brutus ; and in the eyes of posterity the people 
would have been justified, for the union was a great and legitimate 
cause of resistance. Sheridan, in a conversation he had with Mr. Grat- 
tan on the subject, exclaimed, ' For the Irish Parliament I would have 
fought England — ay, I would have fought up to my knees in blood.' " 
But, to return, Mr. Grey, afterwards Earl Grey, also opposed the union 
strenuously in the English Commons — he even moved to " suspend pro- 
ceedings on the union till the sentiments of the people of Ireland should 
be ascertained ;" but his vote was negatived by a vote of two hundred 
and thirty-six against thirty. In short, Pitt had no difficulty in hurry- 
ing the act of union through the English Houses. His partisans in the 
Lords cushioned a motion of Lord Holland's intended to give the Cath- 
olics some pledge for the abolition of their disabilities. 

On the 21st of May, Castlereagh, in the Irish Commons, formally 
moved for leave to bring in his bill for the legislative union. Grattan 
denounced the bill with a divine fury. Lord Castlereagh, in a style of 
insolent menace, censured what he called the inflammatory language of 
Mr. Grattan. "But he defied their incentives to treason, and had no 
doubt of the energy of the government in defending the constitution 
against every attack." In the fiery debates that ensued, Plunket, after- 
wards a. peer of the empire and Irish chancellor, Bushe, afterwards chief- 
justice of Ireland, and Saurin, afterwards Irish attorney-general, spoke 
those memorable passages against the union, which, as O'Connell was 
always repeating them in his "Repeal" speeches and letters, must ever 



-96 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

form an indispensable part of any complete biography of " the Liberator." 
Plunket said, "You are appointed to act under the constitution, and not 
to alter it ; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the government. 
. . . Sir, I state doctrines that are not merely founded on the immutable 
laws of truth and reason, . . . but I state the practice of our constitu- 
tion as settled at the era of the revolution, and I state the doctrine 
under which the House of Hanover derives its title to the throne." He 
would not sacrifice British connection to revolution aiy projects. "But," 
says he, "I have as little hesitation in saying that, if the wanton 
ambition of a minister should assail the freedom of Ireland, and compel 
me to the alternative, I would fling the connection to the winds and clasp 
the independence of my country to my heart." The year before, Plunket 
had said, when denying the competency of the Irish Parliament to trans- 
fer its rights to another legislature, "Yourselves you may extinguish, but 
Parliament you cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the 
people. It is enshrined in the sanctuary of the constitution. It is 
immortal as the island it protects. As well might the frenzied suicide 
hope that the act which destroys his miserable body should extinguish 
his immortal soul. Again, I therefore warn you, do not dare to lay your 
hands on the constitution : it is above your power." At the same time 
he galled Castlereagh by describing him as "this young philosopher, 
who has been transplanted from the nursery to the cabinet to outrage 
the feelings and understanding of the country." He also, while the 
splendid Lady Castlereagh was sitting in the gallery, called her husband 
"a green and sapless twig." This was a withering allusion to the 
suspected impotency of the childless minister, who, in the wantonness 
of his arrogance, had described the opposition as "a desperate faction," 
led by " levellers and pettifoggers," and trading on the prejudices of a 
barbarous people. 

Bushe says, "I see nothing in it (the union) but one question, Mill 
you give up the country? ... I look upon it simply as England reclaim- 
ing in a moment of your weakness that dominion which you extorted 
r rom her in a moment of your virtue — a domiuion which she uniformly 
abused, which invariably oppressed and impoverished you, and from the 
cessation of wliieh you <lut< j <ill your prosfwrity." He then speaks of the 
" fraud and oppression and unconstitutional practice," which were re- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 97 

sorted to for the purpose of carrying the measure, as possibly justifying 
refusal of obedience to it. He says, " If this be factious language, Lord 
Somers was factious, the founders of the revolution were factious, Wil- 
liam III. was an usurper, and the revolution was a rebellion." 

Mr. Saurin spoke thus: "You may make the union binding as a 
law, but you cannot make it obligatory on conscience. It will be 
obeyed so long as England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the 
abstract a duty, and the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere 
question of prudence." 

But our illustrious Grattan on the 26th of May surpassed himself. 
His magnificent speech on that occasion might almost be called the 
"death-song" of the Irish nation, if it were not that, to use his own 
expression, though "in a swoon, . . . she is not dead." In this marvel- 
lous speech he denounces the corruption that prevailed : " From the bad 
terms which attend the union, I am naturally led to the foul means by 
which it has been obtained — dismissals from office ; perversions of the 
place bill; sale of peerage; purchase of boroughs; appointment of 
sheriffs with a view to prevent the meetings of freemen and freeholders 
for the purpose of expressing their opinions on the subject of a legisla- 
tive union, — in short, the most avowed corruption, threats and strata- 
gems, accompanied by martial law, to deprive a nation of her liberty." 
He assails the partiality of the measure: "We follow the minister. In 
defence of his plan of union, he tells us the number of Irish representa- 
tives in the British Parliament is of little consequence. This doctrine 
is new, namely, that between two nations the comparative influence is 
of no moment. According to this, it would be of no moment what 
should be the number of the British Parliament. No, says the minister, 
the alteration is to be limited to the Irish Parliament ; the number and 
fabric of the British is to remain entire, unaltered and unalterable. 
What now becomes of the argument of mutual and reciprocal change ?" 
He shows, in fact, that the union was a "merger of her (Ireland's) Par- 
liament in the legislature of the other." He next shows that all the 
talk of the identification of the two nations is an impudent piece of 
mockery. 

"The minister goes on, and supposes one hundred Irish will be 
sufficient, because he supposes any number will be sufficient ; and he 



98 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONKELL. 

supposes any number would be sufficient, because the nations are identi- 
fied. Thus he speaks as if identification was at once a cause to flow 
from representation, and an event which preceded it. You are one 
people — such is his argument — because you are represented, and what 
signifies how, or, indeed, whether you be represented ? But the fact is, 
that you are identified (if you be identified, which I deny) in the single 
point of representation, and that representation is absorbed in the supe- 
rior numbers of the English Parliament, and that apparent identification 
is, of course, lost, while you remain a distinct country — distinct in inter- 
est, revenue, law, finance, commerce, government." 

The close of this glorious oration is wonderful in its surpassing beauty 
and pathos : 

" The constitution may be for a time so lost ; the character of the 
country cannot be lost. The ministers of the crown will or may per- 
haps at length find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an ancient 
and respectable nation by abilities, however great, and by power and 
by corruption, however irresistible ; liberty may repair her golden beams, 
and with redoubled heat animate the country ; the cry of loyalty will 
not long continue against the principles of liberty; loyalty is a noble, a 
judicious and a capacious principle, but in these countries loyalty, dis- 
tinct from liberty, is corruption, not loyalty. 

'The cry of the connection will not, in the end, avail against the 
principles of liberty. Connection is a wise and a profound policy, but 
connection without an Irish Parliament is connection without its own 
principle, without analogy of condition, without the pride of honor that 
should attend it, is innovation, is peril, is subjugation, not connection. 

"The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the prin- 
ciples of liberty. 

"Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the pres- 
ervation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but without union 
of hearts, with a separate government, and without a separate Parlia- 
ment, identification is extinction, is dishonor, is conquest, not identifi- 
cation. 

" Yet I do not give up the country ; I see her in a swoon, but she is 
not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there 
is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 99 

' Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.' 

" While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. 
Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of his 
faith with every new breath of wind ; I will remain anchored here with 
fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to 
her fall." 

But vain were all the efforts of genius, eloquence, fidelity, patriotism 
and valor. On the 7th of June the bill was read for the third time in 
the House of Commons, and passed. Most of the anti-unionists rose and 
left the House, in order not to witness the extinction of their country's 
independence by her own degenerate sons. I remember having heard 
an old Church-of-England clergyman relate with what indignant scorn 
he and his fellow-students of Trinity College turned aside, that night, 
from Dr. Brown, one of the members of the University — an American by 
birth — who had sold himself to the minister. All refused to speak to 
him. Indeed, the names of most of the renegades to their country's 
cause are tenaciously held in memory and execration by the Irish peo- 
ple to this day. And those who held out gallantly to the last are em- 
balmed in the honored, in the affectionate remembrance of their coun- 
trymen. 

It cannot be denied that the Irish Parliament was corrupted ; but 
the Irish representatives in London are, to-day, far more easily and 
surely corrupted ; and, as Mr. Mitchel justly observes, no assembly in 
the world's history was ever exposed to such extraordinary temptation 
as the two Houses of the Irish Parliament. Four commissioners were 
appointed to carry the provisions of the compensation statute into exe- 
cution. The records of their scandalous proceedings, Barrington tells 
us, were "unaccountably disposed of." Still, it is known that "Lord 
Shannon received for his patronage in the Commons forty-five thousand 
pounds, the marquis of Ely forty-five thousand pounds, Lord Clanmorris 
(besides a peerage) twenty-three thousand pounds, Lord Belvidere (be- 
sides his douceur) fifteen thousand pounds, and Sir Hercules Langrishe 
fifteen thousand pounds." Let it be remembered that Castlereagh was 
not afraid nor ashamed to say in the House of Commons, " Half a million 



100 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

or more was expended, some years ago, to break an opposition ; the same, 
or a greater sum, may be necessary now.'' Mr. G-rattan is our authority 
for these audacious words of Castlereagh. In his " answer to tord 
Clare," Mr. Grattan, after quoting the sentence, says : "So said the prin- 
cipal servant of the Crown. The House heard him; I heard him; he 
said it standing on his legs to the astonished House and an indignant 
nation, and he said so in the most extensive sense of bribery and cor- 
ruption. The threat was proceeded on, the peerage was sold, the caitiffs 
of corruption were everywhere — in the lobby, in the street, on the steps, 
and at the door of every parliamentary leader, whose thresholds were 
worn by the members of the then administration, offering titles to some, 
amnesty to others, and corruption to all." 

But in reality, as I stated before, the purchase-money of the union 
amounted to at least five million pounds. There is much truth in John 
Mitchel's observation on this wholesale bribery : "What Parliament or 
Congress has ever been tempted so ? There is no need to make invidious 
or disparaging reflections, but Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Amer- 
icans should pray that their respective Legislatures may never be sub 
jected to such an ordeal." He adds a note to this passage : " If bribery 
upon the same scale, say one hundred million dollars, were now 
judiciously administered in the English Parliament, a majority could be 
obtained which would annex the three kingdoms to the United States." 
In spite of the undeniable corruptness of the majority in both Houses of 
the Irish Parliament, I am even inclined to agree with the opinion to 
which Mr. Mitchcl gives expression in the following sentences: "In 
fact, he (Castlereayh) felt, with uneasiness, that the genius and eloquence 
of the land, as well as its integrity, were full against him; and no legis- 
lative body, ever yet sitting in one House, has possessed so large a pro- 
portion of grand orators, learned lawyers and accomplished gentlemen. 
It may be fearlessly added, that no Parliament has ever had so large a 
proportion of honorable men. Had it not been so, the splendid bribes 
then ready to be thrust into every man's hand would have ensured to the 
Castle a much greater majority, and we should not have seen the noble 
ranks of unpurchasable patriots thronging so thick on the Opposition 
benches to the last." It is also to he borne in mind that apparently 
some few members voted for the union from a sincere, but mistaken, con- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 101 

viction that the measure would prove beneficial to Ireland. These were 
uninfluenced by fear or favor, their hands were clean. 

I regret that want of space prevents me from giving the list of the 
names of the purchased lawyers and other traitors who voted for the 
union. It is well to hand their infamy down to posterity; it is well that 
the manner in which certain powerful Irish families rose to title and 
eminence should be generally known. The case of Mr. Trench of Wood- 
lawn, afterwards created Lord Ashtown, was one of the most nefarious 
and barefaced instances of bargain and sale that occurred during the 
entire " union " struggle. The minister was from an early period bidding 
for Mr. Trench's honor and conscience, but for a time he failed to bid suf- 
ficiently high. One night Trench declares in the House of Commons that 
he will vote against the minister. The minister and Cooke immediately 
whisper together and look anxiously, but still in an undecided manner, 
towards Trench. Cooke retires to a back seat to count the House. Is 
Trench worth the price he wants ? That is the question. Cooke and 
Castlereagh again confer in whispers, looking wistfully and affectionately 
at the unconscious Trench. At last, however, the eyes of Cooke and 
Trench met. One glance only, and they understood each other. Cooke 
is quickly by his side. He finds Trench open to conviction. A smile 
and they part. Presently Trench takes occasion to apologize to the 
House for having spoken unguardedly against the measure ; on reflection 
he finds he was rash. Being convinced of his error, he will vote for the 
minister. This shameless sale of himself by a man of fortune, family 
and reputation took place under the eyes of two hundred and twenty 
gentlemen. (See Barrington's "Rise and Fall.") Three Trenches are in 
the "Black List," and one of them, in addition to his other bribes, was 
made an ambassador. The names of those, who voted for and against 
the union, are given in the " Red " and " Black Lists," and may be found 
in Plowden's "Appendix" and in Sir Jonah Barrington's "Rise and Fall 
of the Irish Nation." The sayings and protests of the ablest lawyers 
and purest patriots of Ireland against the union, during the long and 
fierce debates on that question, are a noble set-off to the infamy of the 
false and parricidal Irishmen, who betrayed and destroyed their country's 
independence, and those glorious words live and will live to ■ influence 
succeeding patriots to redeem Ireland. In the words of John Mitchfl 



102 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

those " solemn and well-weighed words of warning and expostulation, if 
they could not save the country for that time, remain on record as a pro- 
test, as a continual claim and perpetual muniment of title, on behalf of 
the independence of the Irish nation." O'Connell was never tired of 
referring to them. 

When the bill was read the third time in the Irish upper House, 
several lords voted against it. The dissenting peers also signed an 
indignant protest. Here is the concluding paragraph: "Because the 
argument made use of in favor of the union, namely, that the sense of 
the people of Ireland is in its favor, we know to be untrue ; and as the 
ministers have declared that they would not press the measure against 
the sense of the people, and as the people have pronounced decidedly, 
and under all difficulties, their judgment against it, we have, together 
with the sense of the country, the authority of the minister, to enter our 
protest against the project of union, against tin; yoke which it imposes. 
the dishonor which it inflicts, the disqualification passed upon the peer- 
age, the stigma thereby branded on the realm, the disproportionate prin- 
ciple of expense it introduces, the means employed to effeel it. the dis- 
contents it has excited and must continue to excite. Against all these, 
and the fatal consequences they may produce, we lane endeavored to 
interpose our votes, and, failing, we transmit to after times our names 
in solemn protest, on behalf of the parliamentary constitution of this 
realm, the liberty which it secured, the trade which it protected, the con- 
nection which it preserved, and the constitution which it supplied and 
fortified. This we feel ourselves called upon to do in support of our 
Characters, our honor and whatever is left to us worthy to he transmitted 
to our posterity." This document is signed by the following peers: 
"Leinster, Arran, Mountcashel, Farnham, Behnore, by proxy. Massy, 
by proxy, Strangford, Granard, Ludlow, by prow, Moira, by proxy, 
Rev. Waterford and Lismore, Powerscourt, De Yesci, Charlemont, Kings- 
ton, by proxy, Riversdale. by proxy, Meath, Lismore, by proxy, Sun- 
derlin." In the English House of Lords the marquis of |)ownshire, 
who, like many other Irish peers, had an English peerage also, said 
"that his opinion of the measure remained unaltered, and that he 
would, therefore, give the bill his decided negative." 

The scenes in the Irish Commons on the night when the bill finally 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 103 

passed there — that of June 7th — were solemn and impressive, yet, 
like most Irish scenes, there was a certain element of the ludicrous 
mixed with the tragic features of the drama. Mr. O'Donnell moved a 
postponement of the third reading (he is supposed to have moved or 
declared, on the 5th, that the people ought to resist the union by force). 
Mr. Francis Dobbs, a learned lawyer and accomplished gentleman, who 
however, was a fanatic, if not an out-and-out madman, on the one sub- 
ject of the millennium, rose to support him in a most extraordinary 
speech. This gentleman believed that Ireland was decreed by Provi- 
dence to be an independent state for ever. Ireland was also to be the 
birthplace of Antichrist, and in Ireland the Messiah was destined, at 
his second coming, to reign. The oration of Mr. Dobbs — which was the 
last noteworthy speech delivered against the union — embodied whimsical 
notions of this description. The divided and convulsed state of Europe 
was a fulfilment of one of Daniel's prophecies; consequently it was 
manifest the millennium was drawing near. The detestable measure of 
the union occasioned him (Mr. Dobbs) little fear or concern, as he felt 
that it could never be operative. The house was partly amused and 
partly shocked by this singular discourse. Of course O'Donnell's motion 
was lost. 

Sir Jonah Barrington gives a graphic, though it has been thought 
somewhat theatrical, description of the closing scene that night. Some 
touches in the picture may, indeed, be slightly exaggerated, yet I am 
inclined to think that, on the whole, Sir Jonah's account gives us a true 
and vivid idea of what really took place. He particularly describes the 
grief and embarrassment of the Speaker, Foster, who was an uncompro- 
mising enemy of the measure, yet obliged by his office to proclaim its 
consummation. Mr. Foster's disturbed feelings were visible in the agi- 
tated expression of his countenance and in the tones of his voice. The 
following paragraphs from Barrington cannot fail to interest, at least, 
every Irish reader whose mind is animated by a single spark of 
patriotism : 

" The galleries were full, but the change was lamentable. They were 
no longer crowded with those who had been accustomed to witness the 
eloquence and to animate the debates of that devoted assembly. A 
monotonous and melancholy murmur ran through the benches ; scarcely 



104 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 

a word was exchanged amongst the members. Nobody seemed at ease : 
no cheerfulness was apparent, and the ordinary business for a short time 
proceeded in the usual manner. 

"At length the expected moment arrived. The order of the day — 
for the third reading of the bill for a legislative union between Great 
Britain and Ireland — was moved by Lord Castlereagh. Unvaried, tame, 
cold-blooded, the words seemed frozen as they issued from his lips, and 
as if, a simple citizen of the world, he seemed to have no sensation on 
the subject. 

"The Speaker, Mr. Foster, who was one of the most vehement oppo- 
nents of the union from first to last, would have risen and left the House 
with his friends, if he could; but this would have availed nothing. 
With grave dignity he presided over 'the last agony of the expiring 
Parliament.' He held up the bill for a moment in silence, then asked 
the usual question, to which the response, l Ay' was languid, but un- 
mistakable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed 
to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object 
which he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The ayes have it.' 
For an instant he stood statue-like, then, indignantly and in disgust, 
Hung the bill upon the table and sunk into his chair with an exhausted 
spirit." 

This is the picture, be it remembered, of an eye-witness. On this 
disastrous and memorable night, bands of red soldiery were drawn up 
under the colonnades of that Senate House, which, to borrow the lan- 
guage of the late Thomas Francis Meagher, "lends an Italian glory" to 
the Irish metropolis. Batteries of artillery, too, were kept in readiness 
to sweep the surrounding streets on the first symptoms of a popular 
outbreak. I may here remark that Sir Jonah Barrington deserves the 
] naise due to every member of the expiring legislature, who, spurning 
alike bribes and intimidation, strove hard to the last to prevent the act 
of union from passing into law. The humorous knight's staunchness 
during this entire straggle ought to cover many a fault. Mr. Mitchel 
says of this night's proceedings: "Doubtless to many readers this 
closing performance will appear somewhat histrionic and melodramatic. 
Yet, in sad and bitter earnest, that scene was deep tragedy; and its 
catastrophe is here with us at this day, in thousands upon thousand* 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 105 

of ruined cabins, and pining prisoners, and outlawed rebels, and the 
poverty and hunger that move and scandalize the world." 

The English bill received the royal assent on the 2d of July. On 
the 29th of July, in proroguing the last separate legislature of Great 
Britain, the king congratulated his Parliament, and said he should ever 
consider the union "the happiest event of his reign." 

Though the Irish bill had passed before the English, yet the royal 
assent was not given in Ireland till the 1st of August, the anniversary 
of the accession of "brutal Brunswick's" line to the throne of the three 
kingdoms. In putting an end to the last session of the last Irish Par- 
liament, next day, Lord Cornwallis communicated, "by His Majesty's 
express command," to the bribed legislators, who had annihilated the 
independence of their country, "his warmest acknowledgments for that 
ardent zeal and unshaken perseverance," which they had shown in 
"maturing and completing" the union. With facetious irony, he com- 
plimented them on "the proofs" given by them of "uniform attachment 
to the real interests of their country," which, he still more humorously 
adds, will "not only entitle you to the full approbation of your sovereign 
and to the applause of your fellow-subjects, but must afford you the 
surest claim to the gratitude of posterity." This speech is a perfectly 
beautiful specimen of double-distilled British cant. When all was over, 
Castlereagh, in person, coolly locked the doors of the Parliament House 
and carried off the keys. 

The union took effect on the 1st of January, 1801. On that day a 
new imperial standard (the one ever since in use) floated over the Tower 
of London and on the castles of Dublin and Edinburgh. This standard 
is "quartered, first and fourth England, second Scotland, third Ireland." 
It was then Ireland's harp got its place on England's great banner. 
The union jack, with its crosses of St. Andrew, St. Patrick and St. 
George, was ordained at the same time. 

The debt of Ireland had been not above four millions sterling pre- 
vious to the rebellion. But the expenses of the large army, required to 
crush the revolt and overawe the people, and of the nefarious devices 
employed to carry the union, had, in three years, swelled it to 
£26,841,219. Ireland, in short, had to pay the bill for the slaughtei 
of her sons and the extinction of her nationality. 



106 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 



Before bringing this chapter to a close, it is necessary to say some- 
thing of Eobert Emmet and the insurrection of 1803. Robert Emmet, 
the son of a distinguished Dublin physician, was the younger brother 
of the "United Irish" leader, Thomas Addis Emmet, He was born on 
the 4th of March, 1778. When a student of Trinity College, Dublin, 
he was distinguished in the College Historical Society by his eloquent 
advocacy of national and democratic principles. Of Emmet, Tommy 
Moore writes thus in his life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald : " Were I to 
number the men among all I have ever known who appeared to me to 
combine in the greatest degree pure moral worth with intellectual power, 
I should among the highest of the few place Robert Emmet. ... He 
was wholly free from the follies and frailties of youth, though how capa- 
ble he was of the most devoted passion events afterwards proved." Of 
his oratory Moore says : " I have heard little since that appeared to me 
of a loftier, or, what is a far more rare quality in Irish eloquence, purer 
character." Of his personal appearance he says: "Simple in all his 
habits, and with a repose of look and manner indicating but little move- 
ment within, it was only when the spring was touched that set his feel- 
ings, and through them his intellect, in motion that he at all rose above 
the level of ordinary men. No two individuals, indeed, could be much 
more unlike to each other than was the same youth to himself before 
rising to speak and after; the brow that had appeared inanimate and 
almost drooping at once elevating itself to all the consciousness of power, 
and the whole countenance and figure of the speaker assuming a change 
as of one suddenly inspired." So great was the effect produced among 
the students by his eloquence that the heads of the college, on several 
occasions, sent one of the ablest of their body to the debates of the His- 
torical Society in order to refute the arguments of the "young Jacobin." 
They did not deem even this measure of precaution sufficient, for in 
February, 1798, they expelled Robert and several of his political asso- 
ciates from the university. After '98, as he had participated in the acts 
of the leaders of the conspiracy, he was obliged to take refuge on the 
Continent. He traveled through the south of France, Switzerland and 
part of Spain. He also visited Amsterdam and Brussels, to which city 
his brother had repaired on his release. Some of the other political 
prisoners, who had been released from Fort George, were in France now. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 107 

He burned to strike another blow for Ireland's independence. .And 
there were many circumstances to encourage him in thinking such an 
attempt might be crowned with success. It was evident that the English 
had not made the Peace of Amiens with France in good faith — that they 
had only agreed to it to gain a little breathing-time to recover from their 
exhaustion. They perfidiously refused to fulfil their engagement to give 
up Malta. Bonaparte was justly indignant at this breach of faith. In 
a word, a fresh Avar was inevitable. In 1802 Emmet had interviews 
with the first consul and the celebrated Talleyrand, who gave him reason 
to hope for assistance from France. Later, some of the refugees, espe- 
cially Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. MeNeven and Arthur O'Connor, 
entered into regular negotiations with Bonaparte. Indeed, there is 
reason to believe that the project of Robert Emmet's attempt did not 
originate with himself. 

We have proof positive, too, that at this time a great panic prevailed 
in England. Lord Charles Bentinck writes, on the 2d June, 1802, to 
his brother, Lord William Bentinck, governor of Madras : " If Ireland 
be not attended to it will be lost ; these rascals" (evidently his lordship's 
pet-name for the Irish) "are as ripe as ever for rebellion." A letter to 
General Clinton, of the same date, states that if the French troops could 
land "in the north of Ireland, they would be received with satisfaction, 
and joined by a great number." Lord Grenville, in a letter to the 
marquis of Wellesley, of the 12th July, says : "I hope nothing will 
prevent me from having the pleasure of seeing you next year, supposing 
at that period that you have still a country to revisit." Mr. Finers, writing 
to General Lake, July 14th, says the invasion "will certainly take place." 
Mr. Thomas Faulder, a director of the East India Company, writes, on 
the 3d August, to Mr. J. Ferguson Smith of Calcutta, that if the French 
effect a landing, "they will be immediately joined by one hundred thou- 
sand Irish." 

Robert Emmet set out for Ireland early in October, 1802. He re- 
mained in seclusion for some weeks. Gradually and cautiously, however, 
he got into communication with the remaining leaders of the old " United 
Irish " movement. He was full of enthusiasm and sanguine of success. 
The day before he left Paris, Lord Cloncurry dined with him and Surgeon 
Lawless. That patriotic nobleman, who himself suffered severe imprison- 



108 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ment and made great sacrifices for Ireland, tells us : '' Emmet spoke of 
his plans with extreme enthusiasm ; his features glowed with excite- 
ment, the perspiration burst through the pores and ran down his fore- 
head." He was encouraged, moreover, by the knowledge that a secret 
revolutionary society was at this time working in England. This, how- 
ever, shortly after his return to Ireland, was broken up in London. 
Colonel Despard and thirty other persons were arrested. The colonel 
was convicted and hung. The government had been cognizant of his 
proceedings six months previous to his arrest. Indeed, there can be 
little doubt that they were cognizant of Emmet's conspiracy, too, long 
before it exploded. In 1802 he dined at Mount Jerome, then the resi- 
dence of Mr. John Keogh (O'Connell's predecessor in the leadership 01 
the Catholic body), along with John Philpot Curran. Emmet spoke 
vehemently of the probability of success if another insurrection were 
attempted. Keogh asked, How many counties would rise in such an 
event? Emmet answered that nineteen could be relied on. Keogh 
encouraged him to go on. Next day a magistrate called on Keogh and 
carried off his papers. Mr. Plowden tells us that government, on this 
occasion, " made the full experiment of their favorite tactic of not urging 
the rebels to postpone their attempts by any appearance of too much pre- 
caution and preparation, of inviting rebellion in order to ascertain its ex- 
tent, and of forcing premature explosion for the purpose of radical cure.' : 
The state of affairs in Ireland inereased the hopes of Emmet. All 
the promises of immediate prosperity to follow in the wake of the union 
had remained unfulfilled. The crops of 1801 had failed. Want of food 
and suffering produced discontent among the masses, and, in some locali- 
ties, disturbances. Trade and commerce were decaying. According to a 
statement of ex-Speaker Foster in the Imperial Parliament, the decrease 
of exported linen in 1801 was five million yards. Ireland's debt, and 
consequently her taxes, were increasing. The great bulk of the nation 
was exasperated by the union. The Catholics were especially indignant 
with the government for having broken faith on the question of emanci- 
pation. Besides, they had to endure grosser insults and injuries than 
ever from the Orange Society, which, greatly augmented in numbers, 
was now directly encouraged by the government and by one of the king's 
sons. At the Orange celebration of the 12th of -Inly, 1802, the anni- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 109 

vevsary of the battle of Aughrim, the people were irritated beyond all 
patience by the insolent conduct of the yeomanry. Some of the latter 
were beaten to the ground. Major Swan was knocked down and seri- 
ously wounded. The populace were not dispersed without considerable 
trouble. Several were taken and severely punished by the authorities. 
Tn short, all through the island it was plain that a strong spirit of dis- 
affection still held possession of the people's hearts. 

Emmet's plan was suddenly to seize the Castle of Dublin and the 
British authorities, and then give the signal for a general insurrection. 
Chef de Battaillon Miles Byrne, who was engaged with Emmet in the 
affair, approves of Emmet's plans. He says: "They were only frus- 
trated by accident and the explosion of a depot, and, as I have always 
said, whenever Irishmen think of obtaining freedom, Kobert Emmet's 
plans will be their best guide. First to take the capital, and then the 
provinces will burst out and raise the same standard immediately." 
Many men of mark, and some even of high position, are said to have 
favored Emmet's plans. Be this as it may, he pushed on his prepara- 
tions actively. He collected arms and established depots of them in 
various parts of Dublin. Pistols and blunderbusses were manufactured, 
pikes were forged and mounted, and ammunition laid in. The pikes 
were placed in hollow logs and drawn through the streets to the depots 
like ordinary lumber. Emmet himself invented an ingenious kind of 
explosive machine, filled with powder and small stones, intended to be 
exploded in the face of advancing columns of soldiers. At this time Em- 
met's excellent father died. The necessity of trying to keep his pres- 
ence in Dublin a secret prevented him from attending the funeral. 

One Saturday night, a little more than a week before the evening 
appointed for the attempt, an explosion of combustibles took place in the 
Patrick street depot, which alarmed the neighborhood. Sirr examined 
the house next day. Previous to his coming everything likely to awake 
suspicion was removed or concealed. He made no discovery. The ex- 
plosion was judged to be the accidental result of some chemical process. 
It is not easy to determine exactly how much or how little knowledge 
of the conspiracy the government was at this time in possession of.* No 
doubt their spies were every day filling their ears with alarming stories; 

* Emmet did not organize his followers as an oath-bound society. 



HO THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL 

but these generally proving false, it is possible that they became at last 
as incredulous as those in the old fable, who refused to attend to the 
boy that was always crying, "Wolf, wolf!" when the wolf really came to 
devour him. 

After this explosion Emmet took up his abode in the Marshalsea 
lane depot. His position was every day becoming more and more dan- 
gerous. His life was at the mercy of more than forty persons. Yet he 
was full of confidence ; his enthusiasm made light of all the difficulties 
that stood in his path. The wrongs of his country kindled a sacred 
wrath in his soul. If treachery, as Miles Byrne alleges, were really 
"tracking his footsteps, dogging him from place to place," his noble 
heart seems not to have suspected it. " It never occurred to him," says 
Dr. Madden, " that he was betrayed — that every design of his was frus- 
trated, every project neutralized, as effectually as if an enemy had stolen 
into the camp." 

At last the appointed day, the 23d of July, arrives. There is 
division in his councils. Some call for postponement. Others are in 
favor of an immediate rising. Emmet himself declares for the bolder 
course. Miles Byrne tells us: " Now the final plan to be executed con- 
sisted principally in taking the Castle, whilst the Pigeon House, Island 
Bridge, the Royal Barracks and the Old Custom House Barracks were 
to be attacked, and if not surprised and taken, they were to be blockaded 
and intrenchments thrown up before them. Obstacles of every kind to 
be created through the streets to prevent the English cavalry from 
charging. The Castle once taken, undaunted men, materials, imple- 
ments of ever) 7 description would be easily found in all the streets in the 
city, not only to impede the cavalry, but to prevent infantry from passing 
through them." But everything went wrong. The Wicklow men, who 
were expected in, failed to arrive; for the man who was to bear the 
order to their leader, the valiant outlaw, Michael Dwycr, neglected his 
duty and went no farther than Eathfarnham. The Kildare men arrived 
indeed, but a traitor told them that Emmet had postponed his enter- 
prise; so they all went back at live o'clock in the afternoon. At least 
two hundred picked Wexford men came into Dublin and remained under 
the orders of Miles Byrne, in a house on Coal Quay, dining the early part 
of the night, with a view to co-operate with Emmet in his attack on the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Ill 

Castle. No order, however, reached them ; the attack was never made. 
At the Broadstone a large body waited anxiously for the rocket which 
was to be their signal of action. The rocket never ascended. Emmet 
to the last thought he had large bodies of men at his disposal ; in this 
he was deceived. 

At eight o'clock in the evening he found himself at the head of eighty 
men in the depot in Marshalsea lane. Some one rushed in with the 
false intelligence that the troops were in full march on them. Emmet 
thought the tidings true, and, abandoning his original plan, sallied forth 
at once into Thomas street with his handful of men, some of whom were 
drunk and nearly all insubordinate. Assisted by a faithful adherent 
named Stafford, he vainly tried to preserve order. The stragglers in the 
rear speedily commenced acts of pillage and assassination. Their first 
victim was a Mr. Leech of the custom-house ; him they dragged out of 
a hackney-coach, and, in spite of his prayers for mercy, piked him in 
the groin, leaving him half dead ; he subsequently recovered, however. 
But now the coach of Lord Kilwarden, the chief-justice, is seen ap- 
proaching. He was an excellent and humane judge. He had saved 
many an innocent prisoner from death. We have already seen how he 
once protected Tone, and how, in the final crisis of his fate, he did his 
best to save him. Unfortunately, the frantic mob were now beyond 
control and athirst for blood. They stopped Kilwarden' s coach. He 
called out, " It is I, Kilwarden, chief-justice of the King's Bench." 
One Shannon, it is said, cried out, "You are the man I want." This 
man rushed forward and plunged his pike into the humane judge. 
Already mortally wounded, Kilwarden was dragged out of the carriage 
and received several additional pike-thrusts. His daughter and his 
nephew, the Beverend Bichard Wolfe, were with him. The latter, trying 
to escape, was put to death. The mob offered no insult to the young 
lady. She remained unmolested in the carriage till one of the leaders, 
Emmet himself it is said, led her to a neighboring house. She finally 
made her way on foot, in a state of distraction, to the Castle, and was 
the first bearer of the mournful intelligence of her unfortunate father's 
murder. He was found lying on the pavement mortally wounded. He 
was carried in a dying state to the watch-house in Vicar street. Some 
account for his murder by saying that his assassins mistook him for 



112 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Lord Carleton, the judge who had sentenced the Sheareses. Others state 
that his first assailant had had a relative sentenced by him. Be this as 
it may, the deed was a dreadful and wanton crime. 

Emmet had halted his party at the market-house with the view ot 
restoring order. But they had become a mere insubordinate mob. It 
was at this moment that he heard of the murder. He then retraced his 
steps. Finally, seeing that all was irretrievably lost, he and some of 
the leaders around him gave up their project. A detachment of troops 
appear at the corner of Cut-purse row. They fire on the insurgents, 
who scatter at once. The whole affair is over in less than an hour from 
its commencement. On the street called the Combe, indeed, some resist- 
ance is made. Colonel Brown and two members of the Liberty Rangers 
are killed. The guard-house on the Combe had been resolutely attacked. 
Numerous dead bodies lie around it. Next day the depots are searched; 
quantities of arms and uniforms and eight thousand copies of two procla- 
mations are seized. 

O'Connell was in the yeomanry at this time. In one of his speeches 
he states, if I remember rightly, that he was in arms during the whole 
of this night of the 23d of July, 1803. Passing through James's street 
one day, during his last repeal agitation, with Mr. O'Neill Daunt, he 
pointed out to his companion "a dusky-red brick house, with stone cor- 
nices and architraves, on the south side of the street." This house, I 
may as well observe, has since been pulled down, the ground it occupied 
having, it seems, been required by the Great South-western Railway 
Company. 

" That," said O'Connell to Mr. Daunt, " was the Grand Canal Hotel. 
One night in 1803 I searched every room in that house." 

" For what did you search?" inquires Mr. Daunt. 

" For Croppies," quoth Dan. " I was then a member of the Law- 
yers' Corps, and constantly on duty. After I had stood sentry for three 
successive nights, Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman's turn came." [Nicholas 
Purcell 0' Gorman ivas a barrister of considerable distinction, a contempo- 
rary of 0' Council's, also uncle to Richard 0' Gorman, now of New York, 
in '48 one of the Younrj Ireland leaders.) " He had recently been ill, and 
told me the exposure to night air would probably kill him. ' I shall be 
in a sad predicament.' said he, 'unless you take my turn of duty for me. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 113 

If I refuse, they'll accuse me of cowardice or croppyism; if I mount 
guard, it will be the death of me.' So I took his place, and thus stood 
guard for six consecutive nights. One night a poor boy was taken up 
in Dame street after midnight; he said, in his defence, that he was 
going on a message from his master, a notary public, to give notice for 
protest of a bill. The hour seemed a very unlikely one for such a pur- 
pose, and we searched his person for treasonable documents. We found 
in his waistcoat pocket a sheet of paper, on which were rudely scrawled 
several drawings of pikes. He turned pale with fright and trembled 
all over, but persisted in the account he had given us of himself. It 
was easily tested, and a party immediately went to his master's house 
to make inquiry. His master confirmed his statement, but the visitors, 
whose suspicions were excited by the drawing, rigidly searched the 
whole house for pikes — prodded the beds to tfy if there were any con- 
cealed in them — found all right, and returned to our guard-house about 
three in the morning." 

To return to the unfortunate Robert Emmet : he retired in the first 
instance to Rathfarnham ; subsequently he betook himself to the Wick- 
low mountains. The Wicklow insurgents were still bent on continuing 
the struggle. Emmet, however, deeming the cause lost for the time, 
and naturally disliking all useless effusion of blood, withheld his sanc- 
tion from an immediate attempt. His followers and friends were now 
anxious that he should take steps, without further loss of time, to make 
his escape out of the country. Would he had taken their friendly and 
prudent advice ! But he was eager to have at least one parting inter- 
view with his beloved Sarah Curran before leaving Ireland. She was 
the youngest daughter of the illustrious advocate. In an evil hour he 
returned to his former lodgings at Mrs. Palmer's, in Harold's Cross. 
Here he hoped to be able to see Sarah, for the road from her father's 
country-house, the Priory, near Dundrum, to Dublin, went through 
Harold's Cross. It was at this time the poor servant, Anne Devlin, 
proved her fidelity to him. For more than a month he remained safe. 
But at last, on the 25th August, he was arrested in his lodgings, at 
about seven o'clock in the evening, by Major Sirr. The major, it seems, 
did not know his person. But when the prisoner was conveyed to the 
Castle he was there identified by a gentleman of Trinity College. This 



114 THE LIFE 0F DANIEL 0'CONNELL. 

gentleman, according to Dr. Madden, was no less a person than the well- 
known Dr. Elrington, who, before he died, was successively provost of 
Trinity College and Protestant bishop of Ferns. 

On the 19th September, Eobert Emmet was tried, at a special com- 
mission, before Lord Xorbury (Toler), Mr. Baron George and Mr. Baron 
Daly. Emmet was resolved on making no defence; so that it was little 
matter when Curran (who, though he defended Kirwan, one of the insur- 
gents, spoke scornfully of the attempt) refused to act as his counsel. 
But, as Thomas Davis says, "his refusal to see him was framed too 
harshly." Of this Emmet himself said, "A man with the coldness of 
death on him need not be made to feel any other coldness." Some allow- 
ance, however, is to be made for Curran, who was all through his life 
one of our truest patriots, and who, according to the younger Tone, lmd 
"expressed his anxiety fur a separation from England." In the words 
of Davis, "He was politically indignant at an explosion which wauled 
the dignity of even partial success, and yet had done vast injury to the 
country. Lord Kilwarden's death had irritated him, for he was his old 
friend; and, last of all, his own personal feelings had been severely tried 
by it. 

"Robert had won Sarah Curran's heart, and some of his letters 
were found in Curran's house. The rash chieftain had breathed out 
his whole soul to his love. Curran had to undergo the inquiries of the 
Privy Council and accept the generosity of the attorney-general. 

"What was still worse than any selfish suffering, he saw his daughter 
smitten as with an edged sword by the fate of her betrothed." 

Mr. Standish O'Grady, the attorney-general, who was a humane man, 
in prosecuting Emmet made a speech free from harshness; but the 
conduct of Plunket, who assisted in the prosecution, has left a stain 
upon his great name. He is not, indeed, to blame for accepting the 
government brief. That, the celebrated Peter Burrowes, one of Emmet's 
counsel, tells us, he could not have refused, "though he might have avoi<l<<l 
speaking to evidence." Assuredly, when Emmet made no defence, either 
personally or by counsel, it was unnecessary for the Crown to claim a 
second speech ; at all events, Plunket was not called on to utter furious 
imprecations like the following, especially as Emmel had in reality only 
tried to carry into effect the principles Plunket had so often and so elo- 



I 




ROBERT EMMET. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. U5 

quently advocated in his anti-union orations. The great advocate should 
have remembered, too, that Emmet's father was his old friend : 

"They" [the insurgents) "imbrue their hands in the most sacred 
blood of the country, and yet they call upon God to prosper their cause, 
as it is just! But, as it is atrocious, wicked and abominable, I must 
devoutly invoke that God to confound and overwhelm it." 

Emmet, of course, was found guilty. When asked, in the usual 
form, "What he had to say why sentence of death should not be passed 
upon him?" he replied in those noble words that will for ever live and 
fructify in every true Irish heart. I make no apology for giving his 
speech in full : 

" My Lords : I am asked what have I to say why sentence of death 
should not be pronounced on me according to law. I have nothing to 
say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to 
say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are to 
pronounce and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests 
me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much 
to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accu- 
sation and calumny which has been cast upon it. I do not imagine 
that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from prejudice as 
to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have 
no hopes that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court consti- 
tuted and trammelled as this is. I only wish — and that is the utmost that 
T expect — that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories 
untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hos- 
pitable harbor to shelter it from the storms by which it is buffeted. 
Was I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, 
I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a 
murmur ; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body to the 
executioner will, through the ministry of the law, labor in its own vindi- 
cation to consign my character to obloquy ; for there must be guilt some- 
where — whether in the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe, time 
must determine. A man in my station has not only to encounter the 
difficulties of fortune and the force of power over minds which it has 
corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice. 
.The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, that 



116 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this oppor- 
tunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. 
When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port — when my shade 
shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed 
their blood on the scaffold and in the field in defence of their country 
and of virtue — this is my hope : I wish that my memory and name may 
animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on 
the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domin- 
ation by blasphemy of the Most High — which displays its power over 
man as over the beasts of the forest — which sets man upon his brother 
and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow 
who believes or doubts a little more or a little less than the government 
standard — a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of 
the orphans and the tears of the widows it has made." 

[Here Lord Norbury interrupted Mr. Emmet, saying: "That the 
mean and wicked enthusiasts, who felt as he did, were not equal to the 
accomplishment of their wild designs.''] 

" I appeal to the immaculate God — I swear by the throne of Heaven 
before which I must shortly appear — by the blood of the murdered 
patriots who have gone before me — that my conduct has been, through 
all this peril and through all my purposes, governed only by the con- 
viction which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the 
emancipation of my country from the supeiinhuman oppression unde*" 
which she has so long and too patiently travailed ; and 1 confidently 
hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and 
strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest of enterprises. Of this I 
speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation 
that a] >pertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for 
the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness. A man, 
who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his cha- 
racter with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important 
to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man, 
who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is 
liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence to 
impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to 
which tyranny consigns him." 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 117 

[Here he was again interrupted by the court.] 

"Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your 
lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy; my expres- 
sions were for my countrymen. If there is a true Irishman present, let 
my words cheer him in the hour of his affliction." 

[Here he was again interrupted. Lord Nbrbury said he did not sit 
there to hear treason.] 

"I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a pris- 
oner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. I have 
also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with 
patience and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, 
and to offer with tender benignity their opinions of the motives by which 
he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That a 
judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but 
where is the boasted freedom of your institutions, where is the vaunted 
impartiality, clemency and mildness of your courts of justice, if an un- 
fortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not justice, is about to deliver 
into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives 
sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was 
actuated ? My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to 
bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaf- 
fold; but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold's terrors 
would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have 
been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge ; I am 
the supposed culprit. I am a man ; you are a man also. By a revolu- 
tion of power we might change places, though we never could change 
characters. If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate 
my character, what a farce is your justice ! If I stand at this bar and 
dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it ? Does the 
sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, 
condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach ? Your 
executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but while I exist I 
shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your asper- 
sions ; and, as a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the 
last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live 
after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and 



118 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lords, we must 
appear on the great da) r at one common tribunal, and it will then remain 
for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who was en- 
gaged in the most virtuous actions or swayed by the purest motives — my 
country's oppressors or — " 

[Here he was interrupted and told to listen to the sentence of the 
law.] 

"My lords, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of excul- 
pating himself in the eyes of the community from an undeserved 
reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with am- 
bition, and attempting to cast away for a paltry consideration the liber- 
ties of his country? Why did your lordships insult me? or rather, why 
insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be 
pronounced against me? I know, my lords, that form prescribes that 
you should ask the question. The form also presents the right of an- 
swering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the 
whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at 
the Castle before the jury were empaneled. Your lordships are but the 
priests of the oracle, and I insist on the whole of the forms." 

[Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed.] 

• 1 am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of 
France! And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the 
independence of my country; and for what end? Was this the object 
of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice 
reconciles contradiction? No; I am no emissary, and my ambition 
was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country — not in power 
nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's 
independence to France! And for what? Was it a change of masters? 
No, but for my ambition. my country! was it personal ambition 
that could influence me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I 
not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my 
family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors? 
"My Country was my Idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endear- 
ing sentiment; and for it I now offer up myself, God ! No. my lords; 
I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the 
yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and the more galling yoke of 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 119 

a domestic faction which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the par- 
ricide — from the ignominy existing with an exterior of splendor and a 
conscious depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my coun- 
try from this doubly-riveted despotism. I wished to place her inde- 
pendence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt 
her to that proud station in the world. Connection with France was 
indeed intended, but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or 
require. Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with 
the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. 
We sought their aid — and we sought it as we had assurance we should 
obtain it — as auxiliaries in war and allies in peace. Were the French 
to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, 
I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Tes! my country- 
men, I should advise you to meet them upon the beach with a sword in 
one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the 
destructive fury of war. I would animate my countrymen to immolate 
them in their boats before they had contaminated the soil of my country. 
If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior dis- 
cipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, burn every blade of grass 
and the last intrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could 
not do myself, if I should fall, I should leave as a last charge to my 
countrymen to accomplish ; because I should feel conscious that life, any 
more than death, is unprofitable when a foreign nation holds my country 
in subjection. But it was not as an enemy that the succors of France 
were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France, but I 
wished to prove to France and to the world that Irishmen deserved to 
be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the 
independence and liberty of their country; I wished to procure for my 
country the guarantee which Washington procured for America — to pro- 
cure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as its valor — 
disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience — that of a 
people who would perceive the good and polish the rough points of our 
character. They would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, 
after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my 
objects; not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. It 
was for these ends I sought aid from France ; because France, even as 



120 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 

an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the 
oosom of my country." 

[Here he was interrupted by the court.] 

" I have been charged with that importance in the emancipation of 
my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of 
Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, ' the life and blood of the 
conspiracy.' You do me honor over much ; you have given to the sub- 
altern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this con- 
spiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own concep- 
tions of yourself, my lord — men before the splendor of whose genius and 
virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think 
themselves disgraced by shaking your blood-stained hand." 

[Here he was interrupted.] 

"What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold 
which that tyranny (of which you are only the intermediary executioner) 
has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that 
has and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the op- 
pressor — shall you toll me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to 
repel it ? I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer 
for the conduct of my whole life ; and am I to be appalled and falsified 
by a mere remnant of mortality here ? By you, too, although if it were 
possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your un- 
hallowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it." 

[Here the judge interfered.] 

"Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let 
no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in 
any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I 
could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and 
misery of my country. The proclamation of the Provisional Government 
speaks for our vieAvs ; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance 
barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation or treachery 
from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the 
same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor. In 
the dignity of freedom 1 would have fought upon the threshold of my 
country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless 
corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have sub- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 121 

jected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and 
the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and 
my country her independence, — am I to be loaded with calumny and not 
suffered to resent it? No ; God forbid!" 

[Eere Norbury indulged in a long tirade. He complained of the 
"dreadful treasons" avowed by Emmet. He said the court wished to 
give him the utmost latitude, hoping he would not abuse this indulgence 
by vindicating criminal principles "through the dangerous medium of 
eloquent but perverted talents." He canted about the propriety of Em- 
met's making " atonement to expiate his crimes." He raved about his 
own right to control the prisoner's " desperate sentiments, promulgated 
as the effusions of a disturbed and agitated mind." After saying, "You, 
sir, had the honor to be a gentleman by birth," he referred to Emmet's 
father and to his brother, Temple Emmet, a brilliant young lawyer who had 
died some years previously, and who, Norbury insisted, would have given 
the prisoner's talents "the same virtuous direction as his own." The 
judicial buffoon next became scurrilous, talked of bands of midnight 
assassins, and abused Emmet for conspiring, for the destruction of the 
constitution, "with the most profligate and abandoned," and associating 
himself " with hostlers, bakers, butchers, and such persons whom he had 
invited to his councils." His lordship then indulged himself in a final 
dose of cant or burlesque pathos, exclaiming that Emmet "had been 
educated at a most virtuous and enlightened seminary of learning," and 
that his conduct would cause "the ingenious youth of his country" to feel 
" a throb of indignant sorrow, which would say, ' Had it been an open 
enemy, I could have borne it ; but that it should be my companion and 
my friend !' " After this singular jeremiad, the Irish Jeffries ended his 
jargon, and Emmet was allowed to conclude his address without further 
interruption :] 

" If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and 
cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, ever dear 
and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon 
the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, 
deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was 
your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about 
to offer up my life. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The 



122 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which sur- 
round your victim : it circulates warmly and unruffled through the chan- 
nels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent 
to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven — Be yet 
patient ! I have but a few more words to say. I am going to my cold 
and silent grave — my lamp of life is nearly extinguished — my race is run 
— the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but 
one request to ask at my departure from this world : it is the charity of 
its silence. Let no man write my epitaph ; for as no man who knows 
my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse 
them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb re- 
main uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and 
other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her 
place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epi- 
taph be written. I have done." 

This noble address was Robert Emmet's last precious bequest to his 
country. Few dying words of martyred patriots have been so prized by 
their people as this testimony of Robert Emmet in behalf of Ireland's 
nationhood has been treasured in the heart of hearts of his countrymen. 
It is impossible to calculate, with even an approach to accuracy, what 
its effect on the minds of the Irish people has been in the past, or its 
possible effects in the future. In the poorest rooms in the towns and 
cities, in the lowliest cabins in the rural districts, it is no unusual thing 
to rind cheap prints of Robert Emmet and cheap copies of his speech. 
There are in existence more likenesses of him than of any other Irish 
patriot. There are more copies of his speech extant than of any other 
specimen of Irish oratory. Even in America the American-born children 
of Irish parents find extracts from it in some of the popular elocution- 
books. From the grave, still anxiously appealing in a voice, that rings 
in our ears with far more potency than the utterances of even the best 
and bravest of our living patriots, Robert Emmet, it may be said, yet 
continues to struggle against British rule, and never ceases to urge his 
countrymen to strike, again and yet again, for freedom. 

Dr. Madden tells us that Emmet delivered this speech "in so loud a 
tone of voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court- 
house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 123 



boisterous in his manner ; his accents and cadence of voice, on the con- 
trary, were exquisitely modulated. His action was very remarkable; 
its greater or lesser vehemence corresponded with the rise and fall of his 
voice. He is described as moving about the dock, as he warmed in his 
address, with rapid but not ungraceful motions — now in front of the 
railing before the bench, then retiring, as if his body as well as his mind 
were swelling beyond the measure of its chains. His action was not 
confined to his hands ; he seemed to have acquired a swaying motion of 
the body when he spoke in public, which was peculiar to him, but there 
was no affectation in it." 

But few hours of life now remained for him. On the day of his trial, 
at ten o'clock P. M., the barbarous sentence of the law was pronounced. 
At midnight he was conveyed from Newgate to Kilmainham jail. He 
passed through Thomas street, the scene of his abortive attempt. Im- 
mediately after, on the same spot, workmen began to erect the gibbet 
for his execution. At noon the following day, September 20th, having 
a few hours previously heard of the death of his fond mother, he stood on 
the scaffold with a serene countenance and air. Next his bosom he wore 
a tress of a fair girl's hair. Soon his lifeless body was cut down, the 
neck placed on the block, and then the head was severed from the trunk. 
The executioner held up the bleeding head before the pale-faced, agonized 
crowd, exclaiming, "This is the head of a traitor!" When the guards — 
cavalry and infantry — were gone, and the body too removed, the people, 
old and young, rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, 
that they might have relics of the patriot martyr. It is said that Em- 
met had been told of the existence of a design to rescue him at the very 
moment appointed for his execution. This plan was defeated by the 
precautions taken by the government. 

Thus perished, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, Robert Emmet, 
one of the most pure-souled and disinterested patriots that ever appeared 
on the tragic stage of human history. His noble enthusiasm nerved him 
to sacrifice, at the call of his country and heroic duty, fair gifts of fortune, 
still more brilliant prospects, the promise of fame in eloquence and poesy, 
the delights of youth, love itself. The immortal melodies of his fellow- 
student, Moore, have embalmed for all time the sad story of Emmet and 
the ill-starred lady of his love, who, ere many years passed over, followed 



124 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

him to the grave. Thomas Davis says: "The cold hand soon seized 
him — the tender, the young, the beautiful, the brave. Greater men died 
in the same struggle, but none so warmly loved, nor so passionately 
lamented." At the Macmanus funeral in '61, I witnessed a strange and 
impressive proof of the tenacity with which his countrymen cling to his 
memory. The multitudinous procession had to march through Thomas 
street and past Catherine's Church, the scene of his final and noblest 
sacrifice. Slowly the dense, black columns moved along. As they neared 
the sacred spot, spontaneously the leading riles uncovered. All followed 
their example ; those in the ranks, those on the footpaths, the crowds in 
the windows — tens of thousands were in a moment bareheaded in honor 
of the glorious dead. Similar honors have been paid his memory since ; 
and, in one of the latest insurrectionary attempts made in Ireland, a ban- 
ner waved over the insurgents bearing on its folds the words, "Remember 
Emmet!" 

Nor is it wonderful that to this hour, wherever over the spacious 
earth, whether in their own sacred isle or in regions tar away from home, 
Irishmen and their children are gathered together, his name is honored 
and his ideas have sway, for even his worst opponents have been obliged 
to pay unwilling homage to his worth. Even Lord Castlereagh, while 
he described him as "a young man of a heated and enthusiastic imagin- 
ation," had in the same breath to bear testimony to his disinterestedness. 
We have his authority for the fact that Emmet devoted the whole of the 
three thousand pounds which his father had bequeathed to him to his 
country's cause. Death on the scall'old was Emmet's reward. Castle- 
reagh, on the other hand, destroyed his country, and he was rewarded 
with wealth, power and honors. Even the harsh jailers who guarded 
him almost loved Emmet's gentle nature, and were softened to tears 
when he was led to execution. His courage, too, was of the noblest 
kind. Indeed, his self-possession in the face of danger was singular. 
His brothei-, Thomas Addis Emmet, showed the same trait of character 
on the day when, defending persons charged with having taken the 
'• United Irishmen's" oath, he coolly, in the presence of the whole court, 
took that oath himself, by which act he so confounded the Bench that 
they nut only abstained from calling him to account, but even passed 
light sentences on such prisoners as were convicted. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



125 



One of the Irishmen least remembered is Thomas Russell, who, 
about this time, gave his life for his country. It was at noon on the 
21st of October, 1803, when the last scene of his life added a chapter 
to Ireland's history. Not less patriotic or famous than Emmet, though 
less known to Irish readers, he met his fate fearlessly at Downpatrick 
jail. Eleven regiments were in Downpatrick to overawe the people, 
yet the authorities were in dread of a rescue. Russell was brought 
pinioned to the scaffold. Steadily he gazed through the archway 
on the horror-stricken, white-visaged people. There, doomed to 
die in a few moments, stands a glorious Irish patriot-soldier, endowed 
with rarest gifts of mind and body — a man of majestic stature 
and noble, intellectual countenance, with as kind a heart as ever 
beat in human breast and the unaffected, graceful manners of a polished 
gentleman. All these gifts, of what avail are they? Once more he for- 
gives his persecutors. With calm bravery he meets his fate; his death 
is without a struggle. 

The patriot sleeps in the Protestant churchyard of Downpatrick. 
On the unadorned slab over his relics are the simple words, "The gkave 
of Thomas Russell!" 

I shall now give some of Daniel O'Connell's strictures on the men of 
'98 and the attempt of Robert Emmet. In the main, I differ from these 
criticisms ; 1 even think them somewhat narrow and partial — inaccurate 
in statement, inconclusive ; in short, altogether unworthy of the powerful 
intellect of O'Connell. Nevertheless, as this book professes to give the 
reader materials whereby to form a true idea of what O'Connell was, 
in speculation as w^ell as in action, I shall not for a moment hesitate to 
introduce them here. To make my picture faithful and complete, it is 
necessary that I should endeavor to portray what I deem the blemishes 
of O'Connell's mind, along with what I consider the nobler and brighter 
features of his character. 

One day in the year 1841, at O'Connell's house in Dublin, Mr. Daunt 
met two gentlemen from America, one of whom was a native American, 
the other originally from Ulster. They had come to enjoy the honor of 
an interview with "the Liberator." In the course of the conversation 
that took place, the American visitors reproached Mr. O'Connell with 
having condemned the insurgents of '98. He replied, "that the scheme 



126 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

of rebellion was in itself an ill-digested, foolish scheme, entered upon 
without the means or the organization necessary to insure success. 
And as to the leaders, no doubt there were among them some pure, well- 
intentioned men; but the great mass of them were trafficking specula- 
tors, who cared not whom they victimized in the prosecution of their 
schemes of self-aggrandizement." 

I may remark here that the truth, purity, disinterestedness and 
heroic devotion of a large proportion of the '98 leaders contrast marvel- 
lously with the falseness, self-seeking, mean trickery, petty dodging and 
political depravity of the sordid crew that so often hung on the skirts 
of the O'Connellite agitations. 

The American visitors, however, returned to the charge; they praised 
the Northern Presbyterian insurgents; they had, at all events, a good 
organization. 

" Not they," said O'Connell. " Not one regiment ever stood to arms 
as such. All seemed very fine on paper, but there was little reality. 
Their officers used to meet at taverns, plotted together, made valiant 
resolutions, and saw everything couleur de rose" (^rose-colored). "The 
Presbyterians fought badly at Ballinahinch. They were commanded 
there by one Dickie, an attorney; and as scon as the fellows were 
checked they became furious Orangemen, and have continued so ever 
since." 

This is far from accurate, nor is the tone of it as liberal as it might be. 
The Presbyterians did not fight badly at Ballinahinch. If their disci- 
pline had borne any fair proportion to their valor, the victory would cer- 
tainly have remained in their hands. It was Henry Munroe who com- 
manded the rebels at this combat. Many of the sons of Presbyterian 
"United Irishmen" hold, at this very hour, the national sentiments and 
opinions of their sires. 

The Americans next said, interrogatively, " But the people had great 
provocation to take up anus ?" 

"Oh, indeed they had! In Wexford they were actually driven into 
insurrection by the insane cruelty of Lord Kingston, who since then has 
died in a strait-waistcoat. There was a sergeant of the North Cork 
militia, nicknamed Tom the Devil, from the unheard-of atrocities he 
perpetrated on the peasantry. Oh, the cruelty of the administrators. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 127 



great and small, of English power in Ireland ! Why, since the world 
began, there never was anything like it. I am compiling a book to 
illustrate this fact. I'll have it out in November next. I'll read you 
one or two passages, just to show you how the same horrible tyranny 
has been exercised at widely different times, the circumstances different, 
the actors different — the spirit always identical." 

So saying, he took up the manuscript of his "Memoir on Ireland," and 
read passages from the chapters on Henry the Second, Henry the Eighth, 
and Elizabeth. 

"And this system of tyranny was continued for centuries?" inquired 
one of the visitors. 

"Poh! it is continued to this hour," said O'Connell. "If they do 
not slaughter with the sword as they formerly did, they massacre by ex- 
termination. The Tory landlords, who drive the peasantry in thousands 
fi'om their cabins, put an end to human life by the slow, wasting process 
of hunger and destitution." 

The Ulster gentleman demanded whether the character of Eobert 
Emmet should not be exempted from the sweeping censure passed by 
O'Connell on the generality of the "United Irish" leaders. 

"Poor man! he meant well," said O'Connell; "but I ask whether a 
madder scheme was ever devised by a bedlamite ? Here was Mr. Emmet, 
having got together about twelve hundred pounds in money and seventy- 
four men ; whereupon he makes war upon King George the Third, with 
one hundred and fifty thousand of the best troops in Europe and the 
wealth of three kingdoms at his command! Why, my good sir, poor 
Emmet's scheme was as wild as anything in romance! No; I always 
saw that, divided as Ireland is and has been, physical force could never 
be made an available weapon to regenerate her. I saw that the best 
and only effective combination must be that of moral force. I have 
combined the peasantry in moral organization ; and on them, with their 
revered pastors to guide them, do I place my reliance. And I am proud 
of them — they are the finest people in the whole world ! They are so 
moral ! so intelligent ! They have flung away drunkenness ; they fre- 
quent the coffee-shops, where they instruct and inform their minds with 
a weekly newspaper. And then the good sense of the fellows ! When- 
ever I've asked them what part of the paper they read first, they've 



128 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONXELL. 

always answered me, 'We read the prices first, sir, and then the 
speeches.'' " 

The facts and figures about Emmet's attempt, at the commencement 
of the foregoing observations, are singularly inaccurate. Indeed, the 
remarks are more a piece of ingenious burlesque than a just criticism. 
Successful insurrections have over and over commenced with a dashing 
attempt made by a small, half-armed band. "Never venture, never 
win," is a maxim true in love and war. Mr. O'Connell was personally 
a brave man even in the face of physical danger. He had also, in a 
high degree, the sort of boldness necessary to a successful advocate, and 
a fair share of the moral courage indispensable to a commanding politi- 
cian. But we search in vain amongst his great intellectual abilities for 
military qualities. He had none of that peculiar daring or spirit of 
enterprise requisite to form a military leader. We have already seen 
the grounds and expectations on which Robert Emmet based his project, 
and that competent military authorities approved of his plans. Not to 
repeat myself unnecessarily, I beg here to refer my readers to some 
remarks I have already made in this chapter, in pages 239 and 240, on 
the circumstances and conditions under which patriots should feel them- 
selves justified in calling on their countrymen to revolt. With regard 
to Mr. O'Connell's method of regenerating Ireland by moral force, at the 
beginning of "the Preliminary Sketch" prefixed to this work I have 
endeavored to show both what the "moral-force" system can effect and 
what it cannot effect— above all, what a useless weapon it is in any move- 
ment aiming at national independence or even repeal of the union; in a 
word, in any important international dispute. Upon the concluding 
sentences of Mr. O'Connell's discourse to the American visitors I do not 
deem it necessary to make any comment. With respect to them the 
reader can form what judgment he pleases. 

I may as well introduce here another observation regarding the 
"United Irishmen" made by Mr. O'Connell to Mr. Daunt on a different 
occasion: "I learned," he says, "from the example of the 'United Irish- 
men' the lesson that, in order to succeed for Ireland, it was strictly 
necessary to work within the limits of the law and constitution. I saw 
that fraternities, banded illegally, never could be safe ; that invariably 
some person without principle would be sure to gain admission into 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 129 

such societies, and either for ordinary bribes, or else in times of danger 
for their own preservation, would betray their associates. Tes, the 
' United Irishmen ' taught me that all work for Ireland must be done 
openly and aboveboard." 

In the present chapter I have already commented on some similar 
remarks of O'Connell's, having reference to the danger of betrayal by 
informers, incurred by those who belong to secret societies. I think I 
have shown how little real force there is in O'Connell's observations on 
this point. I have also called attention to the fact that, in spite of all 
his ingenuity and prudence, his vaunted "moral-force" machinery was 
finally inadequate to keep himself and his political associates out of the 
meshes of the foreigner's law; that, on the arrival of a certain crisis, any 
"moral-force" movement will be liable to the peril of informers just as 
much as secret conspiracies; in short, that O'Connell's exaggerated 
advocacy of his favorite "moral-force" theory is replete with fallacies. 
But I need not go over the same ground a second time ; the reader can 
easily, if he should wish, refer to the passage in question. 

The severest measures of repression followed the failure of Emmet's 
insurrection. Besides Emmet, eighteen persons were hung in Dublin. 
A number were arrested and thrown into prison, there to be treated with 
the grossest barbarity. A spy-system prevailed. Eewards on an exten- 
sive scale were offered for rebels. The Irish yeomanry were put on per- 
manent duty at the vast expense of £100,000 a month. In Cork every 
one quitting the country was obliged to have a passport, and householders 
were compelled to affix to their doors a list of the inmates of their houses. 
Among other strict regulations, the sovereign of Belfast ordered the in- 
habitants of that town to remain within their houses after eight in the 
evening. The magistrates of Dublin, prompted by the government, de- 
cided that Dublin should be divided into forty-eight sections, each section 
to be separated from the neighboring ones by a chevaux-de-frise, which 
would suffice to prevent pikemen from effecting a surprise. After the 
passing of martial law the prisons became crowded with hundreds of 
prisoners. As usual, terror and vengeance and coercion reigned in Ire- 
land. Suspicion, suggested by some personal foe, was enough to consign 
a man to imprisonment. Speaking of these dungeon horrors, which years 
afterwards were disclosed in the course of a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. 



130 TEE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Plowden, in his History of Ireland Since the Union, says: "Sensible that 
general charge and invective come not within the province of the historian, 
the author felt it his duty to inform the reader that at this time com- 
menced a new system of gradual inquisitorial torture in prison. Suffice 
it here to observe that there are many surviving victims of these inhuman 
and unwarrantable confinements, who, without having been charged with 
any crime or tried for any offence, have from this period undergone years 
of confinement and incredible afflictions and sufferings, under the full, 
conviction that they were inflicted from motives of personal resentment, 
and for the purpose of depriving them of life." Such was the spirit of 
administration in Ireland during Lord Hardwicke's viceroyalty. In these 
latter days somewhat similar scenes of cruelty and wrong and outrage 
and contempt of all justice have been witnessed in Ireland during the 
prevalence of the so-called " Fenian scare." 

Meanwhile, the results of the union, after three years' experience, 
were declining trade and commerce: absenteeism of landlords, who would 
leave behind them an oppressive agent to grind the peasantry; vanishing 
wealth; deserted country-seats ; Dublin, so recently a fine and nourishing 
capital, sinking from its proud metropolitan position to the humble state 
of a mere Large provincial town; the palaces of the nobles, like the 
senate-house, turned to meaner uses; Irish imports and exports, while 
profitless to Ireland, helping to enrich England: debts and taxes increas- 
ing every day. In short the truth was becoming manifest that the union 
was forced upon Ireland '•through intolerance of Irish prosperity." The 
Presbyterian clergy, who had been bribed qo1 to oppose the union by a 
promise of an increase in the regium donum (royal gift), a stipend first 
granted to them (on a small scale) by Charles the Second, now got their 
bribe. The regium <l<>innn was increased fivefold. In ls.">2 it amounted 
to £38,561. The chief instrument in accomplishing this bribery trans- 
action was the Reverend Dr. Black of Londonderry — a renegade "volun- 
teer" and patriot delegate to the Dungannon (inn cut ion. lie feathered 
his .,wn nest, being made agent in distributing the "gift," But event- 
ually he was his country's avenger on himself, for he Hung himself 
from the bridge of Deny into the river Foyle, and there he miserably 
perished. 

It is little wonder that it was (/Council's greatest ambition, all 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 131 

through life, to be able to succeed in repealing this " accursed act of 
union," as he always rightly termed it. 

The "United Irishmen" in France still negotiated with Bonaparte 
in the hope of obtaining French assistance. For a while Bonaparte 
seemed to enter into their views. It was stipulated that a French army 
should be sent to help the Irish to throw off the English yoke. Augereau, 
who for some reason or other was a favorite with the Irish people, was 
appointed commander-in-chief. Arthur O'Connor, created general of 
division, was placed on his staff. An official paper, still in existence, 
proves that the French army were to land in Ireland simply as auxilia- 
ries — in fact, on terms precisely similar to those on which Rochambeau's 
army landed in America. This was Robert Emmet's view of the rela- 
tions that should subsist between the French and Irish. He had said 
to Miles Byrne (who, having effected his escape, was now in France in 
communication with Thomas Addis Emmet) that he was convinced that 
Bonaparte "would find it his interest to deal fairly by the Irish nation 
as the best and surest way to obtain his ends with England." A new 
Irish legion was also organized in the French service at Morlaix in 
Bretagne. At the coronation of the emperor Napoleon (May, 1804) the 
legion was represented by two of its officers, Captain Tennant and Cap- 
tain William Corbet. The emperor presented to it, as well as to the 
French regiments, colors and an eagle. On one side of the colors was 
inscribed "Napoleon I., Empereur des Frangais, a la Legion Irlandaise" 
["Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, to the Irish Legion"); on the 
reverse was a crownless harp : the inscription was " L'independance 
d'Irlande" (" The independence of Ireland"). It is said that this Irish 
legion was the only foreign corps in the French army to which the great 
emperor ever entrusted an eagle. 

But neither Marshal Augereau nor his army, including the " Irish 
Legion," ever sailed for Ireland. Unfortunately for Ireland and for him- 
self, the emperor was induced to give up the project of invading that 
island. The "Legion," however, served France bravely in the wars of 
the empire. Many of the officers won considerable distinction. 

Indeed, the completeness of the failure of Emmet's insurrection for a 
long time discouraged and tended to prevent any fresh attempts in Ire- 
land at patriotic movements of a military nature. The faith of the Irish 



132 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

people in the efficacy of insurrection as a means of deliverance was tem- 
porarily shaken. They did not sufficiently analyze the causes of the 
failure or draw requisite distinctions. Thus, in all probability, Emmet's 
failure prepared the way for the ready and general adoption of 0* Cou- 
ncil's "moral-force" system. If this conjecture be right, Emmet's out- 
break had an important bearing on O'Connell's subsequent career, and 
•jonsequently must be regarded as an incident that claims a conspicuous 
place in the biography of O'Connell. I may add, before concluding this 
long chapter, that, after this unfortunate insurrection, we also find the 
Catholic aristocracy once more coming forward with eager professions of 
loyalty. Indeed, the wanton murder of the good Kilwarden did terrible 
injury to the cause of the insurgents; many talked of the attempt as a 
mere lawless riot for purposes of robbery and murder. Such is the evil 
that must ever result even to the noblest cause, if its partisans consent 
to crime.* 

* The principal books to which the foregoing chapter is indebted are Mitchel's " Continuation ;" 
Musgrave's ''History of the Rebellion of '98;" Madden's "United Irishmen;" "Wolfe Tone's 
Journals ;" " Grattan's Life," by his son ; " Grattan's Life," by D. O. Madden ; " Curran's Life," 
by his son ; " Curran's Life," by Davis ; " Curran's Speeches ;" " Grattan's Speeches ;" " Shiel'a 
Speeches ;" " Moore's Melodies ;" " Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," by Moore ; " Life of Lord 
Edward," published at the " Irishman " office, Dublin ; " The Histories {before and after the union) 
of Plowden ;" Plowdeu's "Historical Collections;" " Lord Cloncurry's Memoirs;" " View of the 
Present State of Ireland ;" Thierry's "Norman Conquest;" Alison's "Europe;" Davis's " Essay- ;" 
Barry's " Songs of Ireland ;" " Sham Squire and Informers of '98," by Fitzpatrick ; Gordon's " His- 
tory of the Rebellion;" "Edinburgh Review," article by Sir William Napier; Lord Holland's 
" Memoirs of the Union ;" Edward Hayes's " Rebellion in Wexford ;" Barrington's " Memoirs of the 
Irish Union" and " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation ;" Murphy's " Narrative of the Arrest of Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald ;" Ryan and Sirr's "Accounts;" Cornwallis's "Correspondence and Memoirs;" 
" Secret Service Papers ;" Goldwin Smith ; Literary columns of " New York Citizen ;" Sullivan's 
" Speeches from the Dock ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Financial Grievances of Ireland ;" O'Neill Daunt's 
"Personal Recollections of O'Connell;" "Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.," edited, with 
historical notices, by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; " Lord Plunket's Speeches," edited, with me- 
moirs and historical notices, by John Cashel Hoey ; " Memoirs of Miles Byrne ;" " Grattan's Answer 
to Lord Clare," etc., etc., etc. 



CHAPTER V. 

Pictures, anecdotes and incidents op O'Conneli/s caeeee at the Bar — O'Conneu 
travelling on circuit — o'connell in his study — o'connell in the courts — hl3 
Reminiscences of Chief-Baron O'Grady, Lord Guillamore — An amusing reproof — 
Baron Foster's resemblance to a stuffed owl — O'Grady and the cow-stealer's 
witness — O'Grady in the theatre in Limerick — "Checkley be d — d!" — Jerry 
Keller and Judge Mayne— O'Connell's anecdotes of Jerry Keller, Norcott and 
Parsons the attorney-hater — Strange career of Norcott; he becomes a Mussul- 
man — Judge Foster and Denis Halligan — The Liberator's story of one of his 
clients, who wished to show his gratitude in an odd fashion — A PLACE in Glas- 
nevin — A pious and grateful highwayman; O'Connell's life valuable to his 
clients — Curious instance of O'Connell's professional penetration and quickness; 
a tale of a fly — Illustrations of O'Connell's rapidity of conception and prompti- 
tude of action. 

IE have seen that O'Connell made his political debut at a public 
meeting held in the year 1800, to protest against the thrice- 
accursed, as he would himself style it, act of union. This 
patriotic commencement of his public career was creditable 
to his generous nature. His speech on the occasion was manly and 
effective. In short, bearing in mind that it was his first appearance on 
the stage of public life, his success may be deemed even brilliant. 
Nevertheless, he took little further part or action in the political affairs 
of his country for a long time after. During the years immediately fol- 
lowing the union, he confined himself almost exclusively to a diligent 
and laborious pursuit of professional reputation. He had far greater 
difficulties to contend with than those which Protestants of equal abil- 
ities had at that time to encounter. Not to speak of the semi-contempt- 
uous manner in which Catholics were still regarded by the potent faction 
of the Ascendency, and their necessarily inferior influence with those 
attorneys who had most briefs to give, it is to be remembered that, till 
the year 1829, a Catholic was not eligible for the position of king's 
counsel. Confined, then, for such a number of years to the outer or 
junior bar, O'Connell lost many an opportunity of displaying his elo- 
quence as a leading advocate that would, as a matter of course, have 




134 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

fallen to him had he belonged to the sect favored by the state. But, 
then, as invariably happens in the history of superior natures, diffi- 
culties in his path to success and fame only caused him to labor the 
harder to counteract them. Hence, too, he would be the more inclined 
to confine himself almost wholly to his professional pursuits during 
the earlier years of his practice. I think, then, that, before I enter 
fully on the political life of O'Connell, it may be as well to devote a 
chapter or two to a series of anecdotes and sketches giving a picture 
of his life as a lawyer. In these chapters I am about to give, relating 
to his bar-life, I do not think it necessary to be very particular in arrang- 
ing the stories and incidents in their exact order of time, nor do I intend 
to confine myself rigidly to the earlier years of his career. 

I shall commence by giving the celebrated Richard Lalor Shiel's 
most interesting and vivid sketch of O'Connell as he used to appear 
when travelling on circuit : 

" I had sat down at the inn of the little village, and had placed my- 
self in the window. The market was over; the people had gradually 
passed to their homes; the busy hum of the day was fast dying away. 
The sun was sinking, and threw his lingering beams into the neat but 
ill-furnished apartment where I was sitting. To avoid the glare of his 
beams, I changed my position, and this gave me a more uninterrupted 
view of the Long street, which threw its termination into the green fields 
of the country. Casting my eyes in this direction, I beheld a chariot- 
and-four coming toward me, enveloped in a complete cloud of dust, and 
the panting horses of which were urged on with tremendous rapidity. 
Struck with the unexpected arrival of such a vehicle in that place, I 
leaned out of the window to observe its destination, and beheld it still 
rolling hurriedly along, and sweeping around the angle of the street 
toward the inn with increased violence. If my reader has been much 
used to travelling, he will be aware that the moment a postilion comes 
in sight of an inn he is sure to call forth the mettle of his horses — per- 
haps to show off the blood of his cattle. This was the case at present, 
and a quick gallop brought the vehicle in thundering noise to the door, 
where Shenstone says is to be found 'the warmest welcome.' The ani- 
mals were sharply checked, the door was thing open, and the occupier 
hurriedly threw himself out. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 135 



" 'Bring out four horses instantly!' was the command he uttered in 
the loud voice of haste and authority. 

" The inmate of the carriage was about five feet eleven and a half 
inches high, and wore a portly, stout, hale and agreeable appearance. 
His shoulders were broad and his legs stoutly built ; and as he at that 
moment stood, one arm in his side pocket, the other thrust into a waist- 
coat, which was almost completely unbuttoned from the heat of the day, 
he would have made a good figure for the rapid but fine finishing touch 
of Harlowe. His head was covered with a light fur cap, which, partly 
thrown back, displayed that breadth of forehead which I have never yet 
seen absent from real talent. His eyes appeared to me, at that instant, 
to be between a light blue and a gray color. His face was pale and 
sallow, as if the turmoil of business, the shade of care or the study of 
midnight had chased away the glow of health and youth. Around his 
mouth played a cast of sarcasm, which, to a quick eye, at once betrayed 
satire ; and it appeared as if the lips could be easily resolved into risiis 
sardonicus [sardonic laugh). His head was somewhat larger than that 
which a modern doctrine denominates the 'medium size;' and it was 
well supported by a stout and well-foundationed pedestal, which was 
based on a breast full, round, prominent and capacious. The eye was 
shaded by a brow which I thought would be more congenial to sunshine 
than storm, and the nose was neither Grecian nor Eoman, but was large 
enough to readily admit him into the chosen band of that 'immortal 
rebel ' * who chose his body-guard with capacious lungs and noses, as 
affording greater capability of undergoing toil and hardship. Altogether, 
he appeared to possess strong physical powers. 

" He was dressed in an olive-brown surtout, black trowsers and 
black waistcoat. His cravat was carelessly tied — the knot almost un- 
done from the heat of the day; and as he stood with his hand across 
his bosom, and his eyes bent on the ground, he was the very picture of 
a public character hurrying away on some important matter, which 
required all of personal exertion and mental energy. Often as I have 
seen him since, I have never beheld him in so striking or pictorial an 
attitude. 

" 'Quick with the horses!' was his hurried ejaculation, as he recov- 

* Cromwell — thus called by Lord Byron. 



136 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

erecl himself from his reverie and flung himself into his carriage. The 
whip was cracked, and away w r ent the chariot with the same cloud of 
dust and the same tremendous pace. 

" I did not see him pay any money. He did not enter the inn. He 
called for no refreshment, nor did he utter a word to any person around 
him; he seemed to be obeyed by instinct. And while I marked the 
chariot thundering along the street, which had all its then spectators 
turned on the cloud-enveloped vehicle, my curiosity was intensely ex- 
cited, and I instantly descended to learn the name of this extraordinary 
stranger. 

" Most mal apropos, however, were my inquiries. Unfortunately, the 
landlord was out, the waiter could not tell his name, and the hostler 
' knew nothing whatsomdever of him, only he was in the most onconi- 
lnonest hurry.' A short time, however, satisfied my curiosity. The next 
day brought me to the capital of the county. It was the assize-time. 
Very fond of oratory, I went to the court-house to hear the forensic elo- 
quence of the 'home circuit.' I had scarcely seated myself when the 
same grayish eve, broad forehead, portly figure and strong tone of voice 
arrested my attention, lie was just on the moment of addressing the 
jury, and I anxiously waited to hear the speech of a man who had 
already so strongly interested me. After looking at the judge steadily 
for a moment, he began his speech exactly in the following pronuncia- 
tion: 'My Lurrd — gentlemen of the jury — ' 

" 'Who speaks?' instantly whispered I. 

"'Counsellor O'Connell,' was the reply." 

I have introduced the above extract merely to furnish the reader 
with a striking picture of O'Connell as lie appeared when travelling on 
circuit. I shall now turn to other pictures from Shiel's sketches, equally 
lifelike and entertaining-— -pictures of O'Connell in his study and in the 
courts. 

"If any of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, 
should chance, in your return on a winter's morning from one of the 
'small and early' parties of that raking metropolis — that is to say, be- 
tween the hours of five and six o'clock — to pass along the south side of 
Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that, among those splendid 
mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 137" 



differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbors. The half- 
opened parlor shutter, and the light within, announce that some cne 
dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his 
rising with the sun's. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the 
steps and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will 
see a tall, able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary 
occupation. Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. 
From this, and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a 
certain monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first im- 
pression will be that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of 
Kome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be 
rejected almost as soon as formed. No sooner can the eye take in the 
other furniture of the apartment — the bookcases clogged with tomes in 
plain calfskin binding and blue-covered octavos that lie about on the 
floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt with crimson 
tape — than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such 
objects must be thinking far more of the law than of the prophets. 

" He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, 
chamber-keeping, plodding caste who labor hard to make up by assiduity 
what they want in wit — who are up and stirring before the bird of the 
morning has sounded the retreat to the wandering spectre, and are 
already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mortgages, and cross- 
remainders, and mergers, and remitters, while his clients, still lapped 
in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly dreaming that their 
cause is peremptorily set down for a final hearing. Having come to this 
conclusion, you push on for home, blessing your stars on the way that 
you are not a lawyer, and sincerely compassionating the sedentary 
drudge whom you have just detected in the performance of his cheer- 
less toil. But, should you happen, in the course of the same day, to 
stroll down to the Four Courts, you will be not a little surprised to find 
the object of your pity miraculously transformed from the severe recluse 
of the morning into one of the most bustling, important and joyous 
personages in that busy scene. There you will be sure to see him, his 
countenance braced up and glistening with health and spirits, with a 
huge plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely contain, clasped 
with paternal fondness to his breast and environed by a living palisade 



138 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks and mouths and ears 
agape to catch up any chance opinion that may be coaxed out of him 
in a colloquial way, or listening to what the client relishes still better— 
for in no event can they be slided to a bill of costs — the counsellor's 
bursts of jovial and familiar humor; or, when he touches on a sadder 
strain, his prophetic assurances that the hour of Ireland's redemption 
is at hand. You perceive at once that you have lighted upon a great 
popular advocate; and, if you take the trouble to follow his movements 
for a couple of hours through the several courts, you will not fail to dis- 
cover the qualities that have made him so — his legal competency, his 
business-like habits, his sanguine temperament, which renders him not 
merely the advocate, but the partisan, of his client — his acuteness, his 
fluency of thought and language, his unconquerable good-humor, and, 
above all, his versatility. By the hour of three, when the judges usually 
rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity of business, the 
preparation for and performance of which would be sufficient to wear 
down an ordinary constitution; and you naturally suppose that the re- 
maining portion of the day must, of necessity, be devoted to recreation 
or repose. But here again you will be mistaken; for should you feel 
disposed, as you return from the courts, to drop into any of the public 
meetings thai are almost daily held — for some purpose or to no purpose 
— in Dublin, to a certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, 
the presiding spirit of the scene, riding on the whirlwind and directing 
the storm of popular debate with a strength of lungs and a redundancy 
of animation, as if he had thai moment started fresh for the labors of 
the day. There he remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he 
has carried every point: and from thence, if you would see him to the 
close of the day's eventful history, you will, in all likelihood, have to 
follow him to a public dinner, from which, after having acted a conspic- 
uous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, and thrown off half 
a dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires at a late hour, to repair 
the wear and tear of the day by a short interval of repose, and is sure 
to be found before dawn-break next morning at bis solitary post, recom- 
mencing the routine of his restless existence. Now, any one who has 
once seen in the preceding situation the able-bodied, able-minded, act- 
ing, talking, multifarious person I have been just describing, has no 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 139 



occasion to inquire his name — he may be assured that he is and can be 
no other than ' Kerry's pride and Munster's glory,' the far-famed and 
indefatigable Daniel O'Connell. His frame is tall, expanded and mus- 
cular — precisely such as befits a man of the people; for the physical 
classes ever look with double confidence and affection upon a leader who 
represents in his own person the qualities upon which they rely. In 
his face he has been equally fortunate — it is extremely comely. The 
features are at once soft and manly; the florid glow of health and a 
sanguine temperament are diffused over the whole countenance, which 
is national in the outline, and beaming with national emotion; the ex- 
pression is open and confiding, and inviting confidence ; there is not a 
trace of malignity or wile^if there were, the bright and sweet blue 
eyes, the most kindly and honest-looking that can be conceived, would 
repel the imputation. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not 
neglected to set off by his external carriage and deportment — or, per- 
haps, I should rather say, that the same hand which has moulded the 
exterior has supersaturated the inner man with a fund of restless pro- 
pensity, which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly beside his 
inclination, to control. A large portion of this is necessarily expended 
upon his legal avocations; but the labors of the most laborious of pro- 
fessions cannot tame him to repose ; after deducting the daily drains of 
the study and the courts, there remains an ample residuum of animal 
spirits and ardor for occupation, which go to form a distinct and, I might 
say, a predominant character — the political chieftain. The existence of 
this overweening vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and 
movements; and being a popular, and more particularly a national 
quality, greatly recommends him to the Irish people — mobilitate viget (he 
flourishes by activity of movement) ; body and soul are in a state of per- 
manent insurrection. See him in the streets, and you perceive at once 
that he is a man who has sworn that his country's wrongs shall be 
avenged. A Dublin jury (if judiciously selected) would find his very 
gait and gestures to be high treason by construction, so explicitly do 
they enforce the national sentiment of ' Ireland her own — or the world 
in a blaze !' As he marches to court he shoulders his umbrella as if it 
were a pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other as if he 
had already burst his bonds, and was kicking the Protestant Ascend- 



140 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

ency before him ; while ever and anon a democratic, broad-shouldered 
roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off the 
oppression of seven hundred years. This intensely national sensibility 
is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character; for it is not only 
when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish affairs seem to press 
upon his heart — the same Erin-go-bragh feeling follows him into the 
most technical details of his forensic occupations." 

Fagan, in his life of O'Connell, tells a very humorous story of a 
pious and grateful highwayman, to whom O'Connell's was a very valu- 
able life indeed. The substance of the story is as follows: O'Connell 
was engaged to defend this worthy for a robbery committed on the public 
road not very far from the city of Cork. By his clever cross-examination 
of the witnesses and twisting of the evidence, our hero compelled Dame 
Justice to loose her grasp and let slip his client The thief at once 
resumed his former "industrial oeeupation," to borrow a phrase from 
old Captain Gambier — that very wooden-headed director of English 
convict-prisons, whose acquaintance 1 have to thank her Britannic 
Majesty's government for having been enabled to make. Accordingly, 
the following year, on entering the court-house in Cork, O'Connell meets 
once more the unabashed gaze of the same determined delinquent. 
This time the charge is burglary, complicated with an aggravated 
assault that didn't stop very far sliort of murder. The ruffian again 
had Dan for his counsel; and again witnesses, adverse counsel, judge 
and jury were puzzled and confounded, law was hopelessly entangled, 
and the scoundrel sent hack to seek excitement and pocket-money at 
the expense of his countrymen. His energies did not remain long idle. 
He stole a collier-brig, sold (iff the cargo, bought arms and cruised along 
the coast, "seeking whom" (or rather what booty) "he might devour." 
A third time he stands in the dock of the Cork court-house — on this occa- 
sion for piracy — no lis\ A third time OUT wile-famed advocate defends 
the freebooter. O'Connell contents himself with simply showing that the 
crime did not come under the cognizance of the court. It had keen 
committed on the higli seas; it could only come under the cognizance 
of the admiralty court. Is it any wonder that the rescued rascal became 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 141 

this time devotionally enthusiastic in the utterance of his gratitude? 
"Oh!" exclaimed the lucky thief, piously lifting hands and eyes to 
Heaven, "oh! may the Lord, in his mercy, spare your honor to me! 
What would become of me if anything happened to you ?" 

I shall now give the reader a singular instance of O'Connell's almost 
intuitive penetration and quickness in getting at the bottom of a wit- 
ness's mind. He was retained on the plaintiff's side in a will-case. 
His clients alleged that the document in question was a forgery. The 
witnesses to the will, on the other hand, swore that it had been signed 
by the hand of the testator, now deceased, while "life was in him." 
This, it appears, is a form of phraseology imported from the Irish into 
the English language, and common among the Irish peasantry, even in 
those districts where the ancient language has died out. The evidence 
had gone almost entirely in favor of the validity of the will and the suc- 
cess of the defendants, when O'Connell stood up to cross-examine one 
of their witnesses. He was soon struck with the odd persistency with 
which this witness, in answering his questions, unvaryingly clung to the 
phrase, "the life was in him." The truth flashed across O'Connell's 
mind. 

"On the virtue of your oath, was the man alive?" 

" By the virtue of my oath, the life was in him,-' 1 replied the witness, 
resorting to his favorite phrase once more. 

" Now I call on you in the presence of your Maker, who will one day 
pass sentence on you for this evidence : I solemnly ask — and answer me 
at your peril — was there not a live fly in the dead man's mouth when 
his hand was placed on the will ?" 

The terror-struck perjurer in an instant grew pale and trembled; he 
looked like one suddenly smitten with palsy. Completely cowed, in 
stammering accents he confessed that O'Connell had hit upon the truth. 
A live fly had been placed in the dead man's mouth, that the witnesses 
might be able to swear that "life was in him." (See Fagan's "Life of 
O'Connell.") 

This was one of those sudden flashes of intuition which are seldom 
witnessed save in the lives of men of the highest order of intellect. 
Analogous inspirations of talent or genius ever and anon occur to the 
minds of the topmost men in all the practical professions. Thus, Du- 



142 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL* 

puytren darts his lance into the brain of the man despaired of by less 
daring surgeons, and relieves the abscess. Thus the great Napoleon, 
acting on a sudden impulse, orders the Sommo-Sierra pass to be cleared 
by a charge of Polish lancers, and lo ! in the twinkling of an eye it is 
done. Such quick and decisive results can never be achieved by your 
mere plodding men of humdrum routine. 

I shall here borrow a long passage from Fagan's " Life of O'Connell," 
as affording further illustrations, of the most striking kind, of the ra- 
pidity of conception and promptitude of action so frequently displayed 
by O'Connell during his conflicts in the forensic arena : 

""We may here," says Pagan, "be permitted to give an anecdote to 
exemplify O'Connell's rapidity of conception, his knowledge of law, and 
the tact with which he made even his broad humor tell for his client's 
advantage. In a ea.se at a Cork assizes, in which he was counsel on the 
same side with many of the most eminent men who attended circuit, he 
was absent in one court while some points of great importance were 
undergoing discussion in the other. His fellow-barristers were able law- 
yers, but they were severely pressed by the opposing counsel, and an 
unfavorable issue was threatened. The judge was about to declare a 
verdict; counsel were in the last extremity, and their only hope rested 
on O'Connell. He had been sent for once or twice, but he was then 
addressing a jury in behalf of a prisoner on trial for his life. He was 
disengaged in the nick of time; his learned and able friends were in the 
last stage of despair, when he entered the record court in an apparently 
indifferent and inattentive manner, gayly jesling as lie passed in with 
individuals he knew. He could not we believe, have previously known 
much, if anything, of the case he was hastily called to argue; but he 
caught, as he proceeded to his seat, the upshot of what counsel was 
driving at. Drawing the cord of his ample bag, he extracted quickly 
from its depths the particular brief he wanted, and, glancing through 
a sheet or two in the most superficial manner, he rose to address the 
court. In a few brief sentences he cleared away the difficulties by which 
his fellow-counsel were embarrassed. In a few more he turned the tables 
on the opposite party, and in one of the shortest speeches he, or any other 
lawyer, was ever known to make in a case of similar importance, he 
banished all idea of a nonsuit from the judge's mind, and succeeded in 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 143 

winning him over decisively in favor of his client. He disposed sum- 
marily of the main difficulty. He extricated his learned brethren from 
the slough, and, informing the court that the remainder of the argument 
would be carried on by one or other of the junior barristers, he con- 
signed his brief to its former place, closed his bag and returned to the 
court whence he was summoned. The case was won. 'He found,' said 
our informant, ' the able men with whom he acted sprawling like a parcel 
of children; and it was he only who set them on their legs.' The inci- 
dent is but another illustration of his commanding powers as a lawyer, 
and the facility and readiness with which Iiq could apply the acquisitions 
of a practical, sagacious and extraordinary intellect. 

"It is stated in an article in the Edinburgh Revieiv that Lord 
Brougham was intended to lead a libel case, but immediately before the 
trial it was discovered that the other counsel, a mere special pleader, 
was his senior, and the mistake proved irremediable. It was thus, I 
may remark, that the supercession of Sir Arthur Wellesley, after the 
battle of Vimiera, in 1808, by two senior, but far less competent, officers, 
arrested the course and blighted the fruits of that victory. On an occur- 
rence, however, in this city, not dissimilar to that of Lord J Brougham, 
Mr. O'Connell, with instant happiness of thought, applied the remedy 
which had evaded the learned peer's sagacity. Engaged in a case, the 
success of which mainly depended on his examination of the most ma- 
terial witness — a department of the profession in which he had no supe- 
rior — he found to his surprise, on entering the court, that his destined 
station and consequent task were occupied by another — the client having 
without communication, and wholly unconscious of the etiquette of the 
bar or its consequences in this instance to himself, privately retained an 
old friend of more moral than intellectual merit, but Mr. O'Connell's 
senior. The law-agent, Mr. Denham Franklin of Cork, my informant 
of all the particulars, naturally dissatisfied with this act of his em- 
ployer, and fearful of the issue in such hands, was about to abandon the 
cause, when Mr. O'Connell, chiding him for his despondency, directed 
him to ascertain the name of a gaping clown whom his searching eye 
had espied in the crowd. The individual was immediately called up, 
and, to his astonishment, presented as first evidence, by the instructed 
attorney, for examination to the intrusive counsel, but was dismissed as 



144 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

totally incapable of a pertinent answer. Thus, however, the desired 
end was attained, and the leader, his part being accomplished, stood no 
longer in the way of Mr. O'Connell, who succeeded him, and failed not 
to achieve the expected result."* 

* The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are Shiel's 
"Sketches of the Irish Bar ;" Barrington's " Personal Sketches ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Personal Recol- 
lections of O'Connell;" Fagan's "Life of Daniel O'Connell;" "Life and Times of O'Connell," 
Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street, etc. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Lady Morgan's sketch of O'Connell — More of O'Connell's bar-anecdotes and otheb 
reminiscences — value of an ugly nose — a lesson in cow-stealing — unpremeditated 
oratory — O'Connell on the Scotch and English jury-systems and capital punish- 
ment, etc. — Queer anecdote of Sir Jonah Barrington; the pawnbroker outwitted 
— Escape of a robber — An Orangeman who always liked to have O'Connell as his 
counsel — Odd story of a physician — Anecdotes of Judges Boyd and Lefroy; O'Con- 
nell SAVES THE LIFE OF A CLIENT— He DEFIES BARON McCLELAND — A JUDGE STERNLY 

reproved — Anecdotes about Judge Day and Bully Egan — O'Connell humbugs 
Judge Day — His opinion on the subject of judges' wigs— Dan overhauls a client's 
accounts to the great advantage of the latter — He receives a challenge from 
an angry litigant — A high-sheriff's providential thickness of skull — O'Connell 
sitting for his portrait — kerry dexterity; a smart newsboy — blake's duel — 
Breach-of-promise case; Miss Fitzgerald versus Parson Hawkesworth — Grose 
the antiquary — duke o'neill's will — a witty epigram of hussey burgh on the 
ladies of the stratford family ; aristocratic female shoplifters — further in- 
STANCES of O'Connell's legal acuteness — Cases of Mr. Justice Johnson and Mr. 
Justice Fox — Manners and customs in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth and 
commencement of the nineteenth century — The Irish character — "King" Bage- 
nal — Election duels — "Tiger" Roche— Wild conviviality — Catholic lords — Offi- 
cers of the "Irish Brigade" — Prodigality and corruption — Titled tricksters — ■ 
One coffin for a company — Military patronage — A true gentleman — De Beau- 
mont on our aristocracy — Dan and Biddy Moriarty— A combative attorney. 

S I began the last chapter with a sketch of O'Connell from the 

graphic pen of that distinguished Irish orator and colleague of 

his in the Catholic Association, Richard Lalor Shiel, so I shall 

commence the present one with a sketch from another Irish 

writer, perhaps equally lively, the once popular and celebrated 

Lady Morgan. 

"Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton — all who have enlightened and bene- 
fited the world — have been no less remarkable for their labor than for 
their genius. Physical activity may exist without mind, but the man 
of talent cannot be idle even though he desire it ; he is mastered by his 
moral energy, and pushed into activity whether he will or not. Vitality 
or all-aliveness, energy, activity, are the great elements of what we call 
talents. . . . There is O'Connell— the head and front of all agitation, 




146 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

moral, political, social and legal. When we read in the papers those 
eloquent and powerful speeches in which the spectres of Ireland's op- 
pression are called up from the depths of history, with a perfect know- 
ledge of all that has concerned the country from its earliest records, and 
in which unnumbered modern instances of misrule, in all its shades of 
ignorance and venality, are collected from the storehouse of his capacious 
memory — those speeches in which, amidst the fiery explosions of long- 
nurtured indignation (the petulant outpourings of constitutional impa- 
tience), arguments of logical conviction and facts of curious detail come 
forth as from an exhaustless fountain — who but would suppose that 
the life of the patriot, demagogue and agitator was occupied exclusively 
in one great and absorbing cause? It is, however, on his way home from 
the courts, and after legal Labors that have occupied him from the dawn 
of light, that he turns into the Catholic Committee; it is after having 
set a jury-box in a roar by his humor, made butchers weep by his 
pathos, driven a witness to the last shift of Irish evasion, and puzzled 
a judge by some point of law not dreamed of in his philosophy, that, all 
weary and exhausted as he must be, he mounts the rostrum of the 
committee, the Jupiter tonans (thundering Jure) of the Catholic senate, 
and by those thunderbolts of eloquence, so much more effective to hear 
than to read, kindles the lambent light of patriotism to its fiercest glow, 
and 'with fear of change' perplexes Orange lodges. Again, this boldest 
of demagogues, this mildest of men 'from Dan to Beersheba,' appears 
in the patriarchal light of a happy father of a happy family, practising 
all the soeial duties ami nourishing all the social affections. It is re- 
markable that Mr. O'Connell is not only governed by the same sense of 
the value of time as influenced Sir Edward Coke, but literally obeys his 
injunctions tor its partition which form the creed, more than the practice, 
of rising young lawyers. It is this intense and laborious diligence in 
his profession that has won him the public confidence. Where his abil- 
ities as a lawyer may be serviceable, party yields to self-interest; and 
many an inveterate Ascendency man leaves his friends, the Orange bar- 
risters, to hawk their empty bags through the courts, while he assigns 
to Catholic talent the cause which Catholic eloquence can best defend." 
Before this chapter comes to an end we shall see an instance 
strikingly confirmatory of this last statement of Lady Morgan's. 1 am 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 147 

now about to present the reader with a few more of O'Connell's bar- 
anecdotes and other reminiscences. 

Here is one of his comical stories. The heroine of it is a Miss 
Hussey, to whom her father bequeathed an income of one hundred and 
fifty pounds per annum, in consideration of her having an ugly nose. 

"He had made a will," quoth O'Connell, "disposing of the bulk of 
his fortune to public charities. When he was upon his death-bed his 
housekeeper asked him how much he had left Miss Mary. He replied 
that he had left her one thousand pounds, which would do for her very 
well, if she made off any sort of a good husband. ' Heaven bless your 
honor!' cried the housekeeper; 'and what decent man would ever take 
her with the nose she has got?' ' Why, that is really very true,' replied 
the dying father ; ' I never thought of her nose ;' and he lost no time in 
adding a codicil that gave Miss Mary an addition of one hundred and 
fifty pounds a year as a set-off against her ugliness." 

On another occasion O'Connell told the following anecdote about a 
cow-stealer : "I was once counsel for a cow-stealer, who was clearly con- 
victed — the sentence was transportation for fourteen years. At the end 
of that time he returned, and happening to meet me, he began to talk 
about the trial. I asked him how he always had managed to steal the 
fat cows; to which he gravely answered: 'Why, then, I'll tell your 
honor the whole secret of that, sir. Whenever your honor goes to steal a 
cow, always go on the worst night you can, for if the weather is very bad 
the chances are that nobody will be up to see your honor. The way 
you'll always know the fat cattle in the dark is by this token — that the 
fat cows always stand out in the more exposed places, but the lean ones 
always go into the ditch for shelter.' So I got," added O'Connell, "that 
lesson in cow-stealing gratis from my worthy client." 

Mr. Daunt happening to observe to our hero "that when a speaker 
averred with much earnestness that his speech was unpremeditated, he 
never felt inclined to believe him," O'Connell laughed and said, in reply : 

" I remember a young barrister, named B , once came to consult me 

on a case in which he was retained, and begged my permission to read 
for me the draft of a speech he intended to deliver at the trial, which 
was to come on in about a fortnight. I assented , whereupon he began 
to read, ' Gentlemen of the jury, I pledge you my honor as a gentleman 



148 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

that I did not know until this moment I should have to address you in this 
cause.' 'Oh! that's enough!' cried I; 'consult somebody else — that 
specimen is OAiite enough for me!' " 

At Maryborough, in the Queen's county, before they retired to bed 
one night, Mr. Daunt and "the liberator" had a conversation on the 
subject of trial by jury. Mr. Daunt asked him "if he didn't think it 
absurd to require unanimity in a jury? if the plan of the old Scotch 
criminal juries — namely, that of deciding by the majority — was not the 
more rational mode?" 

"In theoiy it is," said O'Connell in reply; "but there are great 
practical advantages in the plan that requires unanimity. To be sure, 
there is this disadvantage, that one obstinate fellow may knock up a 
good verdict in spite of eleven clear-headed jurors, but that does not 
happen once in a hundred cases. And the necessity for a unanimous" 
verdict may be a vast protection for a person unjustly charged with an 
offence. I remember a case in which eleven jurors found a man guilty 
of murder, while the twelfth — a gawky fellow, who had never before 
been on a jury — said he thought the deceased died by a fall from his 
horse. The dissident juror persisted; the case was accordingly held 
over till the next as>i/es, and in the mean time evidence came out that 
most clearly confirmed the surmise of the gawky juror. Here, then, if 
the majority of jurors had been able to return a verdict, an innocent man 
had suffered death." 

O'Connell held strong convictions against capital punishment. He 
fancied that his own professional experience furnished him with many 
valid reasons for its abolition. I do not think it necessary here to 
express any opinion, one way or the other, on the vexed questions bear- 
ing on the lawfulness or advisability of inflicting the punishment of death 
on criminals guilty of certain black ami enormous crimes. O'Connell "told 
me" says Daunt, "of an instance where an innocent life was all but 
lost — the prosecutrix (a woman whose house had been attacked) having 
erroneously sworn to the identity of a prisoner who was totally guiltless 
of the offence. The man was found guilty and sentenced to death on her 
evidence. He bore a considerable personal resemblance to the real crim- 
inal. The latter having been arrested and confronted with the prosecu- 
trix, she fainted with honor at her mistake, which had been so nearly fatal 




An Irish Patriot's Farewell. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNKLL. 149 

in its consequences. By the prompt interference of Judge Burton (then 
at the bar) and O'Connell, the government were induced to discharge the 
unoffending individual, who had the narrowest possible escape of a rope." 

Here is a more terrible case in O'Connell' s own words, extracted from 
a speech made by him at a meeting held in London : 

" T myself defended three brothers of the name of Cremin. They 
were indicted for murder. The evidence was most unsatisfactory. The 
judge had a leaning in favor of the Crown prosecution, and he almost 
compelled the jury to convict them. I sat at my window as they passed 
by after sentence of death had been pronounced ; there was a large mil- 
itary guard taking them back to jail, positively forbidden to allow any 
communication with the three unfortunate youths. But their mother 
was there ; and she, armed in the strength of her affection, broke through 
the guard. I saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two 
years of age ; I saw her hang on the second, who was not twenty ; I saw 
her faint when she clung to the neck of the youngest boy, who was but 
eighteen ; and I ask, What recompense could be made for such agony ? 
They were executed, and — they were innocent!" 

The conduct of the judge in this case bears some resemblance to that 
of Judge Keogh in the case of those two unfortunate brothers, the Cor- 
macks, tried at Nenagh some years subsequently to the death of O'Connell. 

The liberator, one evening at Darrynane, defended that principle 
of law which protects the individual who has once been acquitted of a 
capital charge from being arraigned a second time for the same offence. 
Some one tried to show "that this principle might sanction injustice; 
as in a case where a murderer had been acquitted through defect of evi- 
dence, and where a competent witness volunteered to tender direct testi- 
mony against the accused in the event of a new trial." 

"My good sir," said O'Connell, "if the principle of repeating the 
trial were once admitted, the injustice on the other side would be infi- 
nitely greater. If the accused could be tried over again on the appear- 
ance of a fresh witness, pray where could you limit the danger to inno- 
cent persons unjustly arraigned ? At the expiration of months or years, 
they would again be liable to trial for their lives, if any unprincipled wit- 
nesses should offer themselves as being competent to give fresh evidence.'' 

Once, when they were travelling together from Roscrea to Dublin. 



150 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

O'Connell told his friend Mr. Daunt an anecdote of the humorous and 
eccentric historian of the union. Sir Jonah Barrington, "which, if true, 
is rather more creditable to his ingenuity than to his integrity." This 
is the very just remark of O'Xeill Daunt. 

"Sir Jonah." said O'Connell, "had pledged his family plate for a 
large sum of money to one Stevenson, a Dublin pawnbroker, and feeling 
desirous to recover the plate without paying back the money, he hit upon 
the following device to accomplish his purpose. He invited the viceroy 
and several noblemen to dinner, and. then went to Stevenson, begging 
he might let him have the plate for the occasion. 'You see how I am 
circumstanced, Stevenson,' said Sir Jonah. 'I have asked all these fine 
folk to dine, and I must borrow back my plate for this one day. I assure 
you, my dear fellow, you shall have it again; and in order to secure its 
restoration to your hands, you shall come and make one of our party. I 
can ask one private friend; and you. as a member of the Common 
Council, are perfectly admissible. Come — there's a good fellow! and 
you know yon need not leave my house until you cany off the plate 
along with you.' Stevenson, delighted at the honor of dining at the 
table with the viceroy, lords and judges, fell into the trap, and went to 
dinner. Sir Jonah plied him well with champagne, and soon made him 
potently drunk. At a late hour he was sent home in a job-coach; liis 
wife put him to bed, and he never awoke till two o'clock next day. 
An hour then elapsed before his misty, muddled recollection cleared 
itself, lie then bethought him of the plate — he started up and drove to 
Barrington's. But. alas! Sir Jonah was gone, and, what was much worse, 
the plate was gone /<><>.' Poor Stevenson recorded a bitter vow against 
dining in aristocratic company for the rest of his natural life." 

As O'Connell and Daunt, at the close of their journey, drove along 
Skinner's Row, the former pointed out the ruins of the old Four Courts 
to his friend, and showed him where the old jail had stood. "Father 
Lube*," said O'Connell, "informed me of a curious escape of a robber 
from that jail. The rogue was rich, and gave the jailer one hundred and 
twenty pounds to let him out. The jailer then prepared for his pris- 
oner's escape in the following manner: he announced that the fellow 
had a spotted fever, and the rogue shammed sick so successfully that no 
one suspected any cheat. Meanwhile the jailer procured a fresh corpse, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 151 



and smuggled it into the prisoner's bed, while the pseudo-invalid was 
let out one fine dark night. The corpse, which passed for that of the 
robber, was decently interred, and the trick remained undiscovered till 
revealed by the jailer's daughter, long after his death. Father Lube 
told me." added O'Connell, "that the face of the corpse was dappled 
with paint, to imitate the discolorment of a spotted fever." 

Hedges Eyre, a well-known Orangeman in his day, always took care 
to have our hero as his counsel when he had any law-business on hand. 
An Orange friend of Eyre's, with more bigotry in his heart than com- 
mon sense in his brains, once reproached him bitterly for retaining as 
his counsel the great arch-Papist advocate. 

"You've got seven counsel without him," quoth this bigoted block- 
head, "and why should you give your money to that Papist rascal?" 

Hedges kept silent ; but the tw T o stayed in court, watching the pro- 
gress of the trial. The counsel opposed to Eyre pressed a point for non- 
suit; the judge (Johnson) seemed to incline to their view. O'Connell pro- 
tested against the nonsuit as a great injustice. The judge was stubborn. 

"Well, hear me at all events," cried O'Connell. 

"No, I won't," replies the judge; "I've already heard the leading 
counsel." 

"But I am conducting counsel," rejoined O'Connell, "and more inti- 
mately aware of the details of the case than my brethren. I entreat, 
therefore, you will hear me." 

The judge consented with a bad grace - but five minutes had hardly 
elapsed when O'Connell had succeeded in convincing him of the injustice 
of the nonsuit. 

"Now," said Hedges Eyre, triumphing over his brother Orangeman, 
"now do you see why I gave my money to that Papist rascal?" 

O'Connell amused his guests with a story of a medical doctor, who was 
detained for a number of days at the Limerick assizes, to which he had 
been subpoenaed as a witness. He pressed the judge to order him his ex- 
penses. " On what plea do you claim your expenses ?" demanded the judge. 

" On the plea of my heavy personal loss and inconvenience, my lord," 
replied the applicant, rather innocently; "I have been kept away from 
my patients these five days, and, if I am kept here much longer, how do 
I know but they 1 11 get wellV 



152 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

On the same occasion O'Connell told his friends how, year after year, 
his efforts to get a post-office established at the little town of Cahir- 
civeen, near which the reader, no doubt, remembers he was born, were 
all in vain, until, by good luck, in 1809, he gained a lawsuit for Edward 
Lees (afterwards Sir Edward), the secretary to the General Post-Office 
and brother to that eccentric parson, Sir Harcourt Lees. After the suc- 
cessful lawsuit, Lees proved the warmth of his gratitude by procuring 
the establishment of a post-office at Cahirciveen. 

It is perfectly clear that our hero had all the qualifications requisite 
to enable him to play to perfection the part of an agreeable host or a 
pleasant travelling-companion; above all, that he was a most amusing 
and even admirable story-teller. "O'Connell," says his friend, the ob- 
servant Mr. Daunt, "never appeared to greater advantage than when 
presiding at his own table. Of him it may be said, as Lockhart has 
observed of Scott, that liis notions of hospitality included the necessity 
of making his intellectual stores available to the amusement of his 
guests. His conversation was replete with anecdote; and the narra- 
tives which possessed for me by far the greatest interest were those in 
which the narrator was personally concerned. His memory was pro- 
digious; and not the smallest trait of character or manner in the num- 
berless persons with whom, in the course of his bustling career, he had 
come in contact escaped the grasp of his retentive recollection." 

Conversing once on the subject of temperance versus intemperance, 
he was led to speak of Judge Boyd. This judge, he said, "was so fond 
of brandy that he always kept a supply of it in court upon the desk 
before him, in an inkstand of peculiar make. His lordship used to lean 
his arm upon the desk, bob down his head, and steal a hurried sip lrom 
time to time, through a quill that lay among the pens, which manoeuvre 
he nattered himself escaped observation. 

"One day it was sought by counsel to convict a witness of having 
been intoxicated at the period to which his evidence referred; Mr. Hairy 
Deane Grady labored hard, upon the other hand, to show that the man 
had been sober. 

" 'Come now, my good man,' said Judge Boyd, 'it is a very important 
consideration — tell the court truly, were you drunk or were you sober 
upon that occasion ?' 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 153 

"' Oh ! quite sober, my lord !' broke in Grady, with a very significant 
look at the inkstand ; 'as sober — as a Judge V " 

On one occasion O'Connell had been retained to defend a prisoner, 
whose case (one of life and death) was considered hopeless by his attor- 
ney, and, indeed, by all who knew anything about the matter. In fact, 
the evidence against the prisoner seemed overwhelming. When the trial 
came on, O'Connell plainly saw that, to give his client the smallest 
chance of getting off, it was necessary to leave the beaten track and 
defend him in a style altogether unique. The judge was Sergeant 
Lefroy, then comparatively young. He was acting in place of the reg- 
ular judge, who was prevented by illness from presiding. O'Connell 
commenced by putting a number of utterly illegal questions to the chief 
witness for the prosecution. The counsel for the Crown at once objected 
to O'Connell's questions, and Sergeant Lefroy quickly cut him short, de- 
ciding in the most positive manner that he could not suffer him to proceed 
w T ith such an illegal line of cross-examination. This was just what O'Con- 
nell wanted; his opponents and the judge had alike fallen into his trap. 
With every appearance of uncontrollable indignation, he exclaimed, 
"As you refuse me permission to defend my client, I leave his fate in 
your hands; his blood will be on your head, if he be condemned." 
O'Connell then rushed impetuously out of court, and commenced walk- 
ing up and down outside. 

About half an hour goes by; O'Connell is still promenading with 
hurried steps, w T hen, all of a sudden, he sees his client's attorney rush- 
ing out of the court-house hatless and excited 'He's acquitted! he's 
acquitted !" cries the limb of law, full of delight and gasping for breath. 
O'Connell gives a comical grin. All his calculations had proved correct- 
He had shrewdly guessed that an unhackneyed judge, like Lefroy, would 
shrink back, if it were at all possible, from being in any way instru- 
mental in causing a capital conviction. " My only chance," said O'Con- 
nell, "was to throw the responsibility on the judge, who had a natural 
timidity of incurring a responsibility so serious." In short, Lefroy had 
insensibly acted as the prisoner's advocate, had cross-examined the wit- 
nesses brought against him, and had ended by charging the jury in his 
favor. 

We have already seen how boldly O'Connell defied the judicial inso- 



154 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Ience of Norbury. He was never afraid to beard the haughtiest and most 
overbearing occupants of the bench. His vehement self-assertion was 
more than a match for their arrogance and pride. His bitter sarcasm 
could cut keener than their envenomed and prejudiced malignancy. One 
day a discussion took place in court on a motion for a new trial. A 
young attorney was called on by the adverse counsel either to admit a 
certain statement as evidence or hand in a document he could legally 
withhold. O'Connell is present in the court. He rises promptly and 
tells the attorney "to make no admission." 

" Have you a brief in this case, Mr. O'Connell ?" demands Baron 
McCleland, in a tone of marked insolence. 

" I have not, my lord, but I shall have one when the case goes down 
to the assizes." 

"When /was at the bar," retorts the judge, "it was not my habit to 
anticipate briefs." 

"When you were at the bar I never chose you for a model, and now 
that you are on the bench, I shall not submit to your dictation." 

Having given the baron this bitter pill to swallow, O'Connell marches 
out of court along with the young solicitor. 

During a trial at the assizes of Cork, a question arose as to the 
admissibility of certain evidence. O'Connell, with great ability, urged 
that it was manifestly admissible. The court, however, ruled against 
him, and thus he was deprived of the benefit of the testimony in dispute. 
Next morning, before resuming the hearing of the case, which was a 
protracted one, the judge addressed our hero in the following terms: 

"I have reconsidered my decision of yesterday, and my present 
opinion is, that the evidence tendered by you should not have been 
rejected. You can therefore reproduce that evidence now." 

Did O'Connell then and there respond to the judge's recantation by 
an elaborate display of deferential gratitude? Not a bit of it. Most 
barristers, indeed, would have done so, but our sturdy Dan burst out 
impatiently — 

"Had your lordship known as much law yesterday morning as you 
do to-day, you would have spared me a vast amount of time and trouble, 
and my client a considerable amount of injury. Crier, call up the wit- 
nesses." 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 155 

The judge, thoroughly abashed by this somewhat stern rebuke, 
preserved a complete silence. 

One evening toward the end of November or in the beginning of 
December, 1840, at Darrynane, Mr. O'Connell amused his guests with 
some of his forensic recollections. He talked of ex-Judge Day, who 
then, well stricken in years, was living in retirement, having resigned 
his seat on the bench quite a number of years previously. 

"He must now," observed O'Connell, "be at least ninety-eight, and 
he writes as firm a hand as ever, and preserves his intellect (such as it 
is) unimpaired. To be sure, he never had much to preserve in this 
respect; but all he ever had he has kept. He had excellent qualities of 
the heart ; no man would take more pains to serve a friend ; but as a 
judge, they could scarcely have placed a less efficient man upon the 
bench. Curran used to say, that Day's efforts to understand a point of 
law reminded him of nothing so much as the attempt to open an oyster 
with a rolling-pin. 

" He once said to me at the Cork assizes, ' Mr. O'Connell, I must not 
allow you to make a speech ; the fact is, I am always of opinion with 
the last speaker, and therefore I will not let you say one word.' 

" 'My lord,' said I, 'that is precisely the reason why I'll let nobody 
have the last word but myself, if I can help it' 

" I had the last word, and Day charged in favor of my client. Day 
was made a judge in 1798. He had been chairman of Kilmainham, 
with a salary of twelve hundred pounds a year. When he got on the 
bench, Bully Egan got the chairmanship." 

Somebody in the company asked O'Connell, "Was Bully Egan a good 
lawyer ?" 

" He was a successful one-. His bullying helped him through. He 
was a desperate duellist. One of his duels was fought with a Mr. Eeilly, 
who fired before the word was given. The shot did not take effect. 

" 'Well, at any rate, my honor's safe!' cried Eeilly. 

" 'Is it so?' said Egan. 'Egad, I'll take a slap at your honor, for 
all that.' 

" And Egan deliberately held his pistol pointed for full five minutes 
at Eeilly, whom he kept for that period in the agonies of mortal 
suspense." 



156 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell, " Did he kill him ?" 

"Not he!" responded O'Connell; "he couldn't hit a haystack. If 
courage appertained to duelling, he certainly possessed it. But in every- 
thing else he was the most timid man alive. Once I stated in the Court 
of Exchequer that I had, three days before, been in the room with a 
man in a fever, one hundred and twenty miles off. The instant I said 
so, Egan shuffled away to the opposite side of the court, through pure 
fear of infection. Egan used to make a vast deal of money as counsel 
at elections." 

Doubtless this was on account of his predilection for the arbitrament 
of the pistol. A taste for duelling was an indispensable qualification 
for success as an Irish electioneering counsel in those days — 

" For those were the days when the angry blow 
Supplanted the word that chides — 
When hearts could glow — long ago, 

(Not) in the days of the Barmecides" — 

but in the days of Bully Egan, Tiger Roche, Fighting Fitzgerald, Brian 
Maguire, "et hoc genus o/iuic" — the storied heroes of many a neat 
exchange of shots in the Fifteen Acres and elsewhere. 

I may as well mention, in passing, that old Judge Day died ;i few 
months after the date of the above conversation. It was probably after 
his death that (some further reference being made to the old wiseacre) 
O'Connell called up the following forensic reminiscence: 

"Ay, poor Day!'' said O'Connell; "most innocent of law was my 
poor friend Day! I remember once I was counsel before him for a man 
who had stolen some goats. The fact was proved, whereupon I produced 
to old Day an old act of Parliament, empowering the owners of cornfields, 
gardens or plantations to kill and destroy all goats trespassing thereon. 
I contended that this legal power of destruction clearly demonstrated 
that goats were not property ; and I thence inferred that the stealer of 
goats was not legally a thief, nor punishable as such. Poor Day charged 
the jury accordingly, and the prisoner was acquitted." Dogberry could 
hardly surpass this. 

As we are on the subject of judges, I shall add here a curious, 01 
rather comical, instance of the absurdity of some of the attacks made 
by the Tory papers on O'Connell dining the palmy days of his agita- 



THE LIFE OF DAJNTEL O'CONNELL. 157 

fcions. One of these oracles of political sagacity (Mr. Daunt, who is my 
authority for the statement, could not call to memory the name of thip 
paragon of newspapers), in grave and sober earnestness, arraigned the 
great agitator for having sought to bring the judicial character into dis- 
repute, because one of his harangues at Leeds, in Yorkshire (horrible to 
relate!), contained the following profane comments upon the judicial wig : 

"The judges of the land, who come down to preside in your courts 
with all their solemn gravity and harlequinade, astonish the people with 
their profusion of horse-hair and chalk ! For must not every one think 
what a formidable, terrible fellow he is, that has got twenty-nine pounds' 
weight of an enormous powdered wig upon his head ? This is all hum- 
bug of the old times, and I long to see it kicked away along with many 
other antiquated absurdities and abuses." 

Surely, it would have been in nowise wonderful if the disciples of old 
Mother Goose, who, under that venerable dame's inspiration, contributed 
so many of the lucubrations of the Tory press of those days, and the 
innumerable wooden-pated Deadlocks of the tribe of Tory squires, who 
derived their few and obsolete notions from that antiquated fountain, 
had become wild with alarm lest O'Connell's reckless impiety in thus 
blaspheming judicial horse-hair should at once loosen "the entire cohe- 
sion of things," and bring back the anarchy "of primeval night and 
chaos." 

Returning to O'Connell's bar-reminiscences, here is a specimen of 
the minute and painstaking way in which, when a rising young lawyer, 
he looked after his client's interests. It is easy to perceive that his suc- 
cess at the bar was inevitable from the first. Such a man could not do 
otherwise than achieve success in almost any practical walk of life. 
But to our illustration : 

During the year in which "the liberator" was lord-mayor, Mr. John 
O'Neill (a survivor of the volunteers of 1782) on one occasion solicited 
his good offices in behalf of the children of an unfortunate man, who 
had a short time before died in embarrassed circumstances. 

" Poor fellow!" said O'JSTeill, "he was a slobbering sort of manager. 
The Dutch say, ' that when a man becomes distressed, it is a sure sign 
that he has not kept his accounts with regularity.' " 

" The Dutch are not far from the truth," observed O'Connell. " I 



158 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONXELL. 



have often seen preposterously slobbering mismanagement among men 
for whom I have been professionally concerned. I recollect I once had 
a client, an unlucky fellow, against whom a verdict had been given for 
a balance of eleven hundred pounds. We were trying to set aside that 
verdict. I was young at the bar at that time ; my senior counsel con- 
tented themselves with abusing the adverse witnesses, detecting flaws 
in their evidence and making sparkling points — in short, they made 
very flourishing and eloquent, but rather ineffective, speeches. Whilst 
they flourished away, I got our client's books, and, taking my place im- 
mediately under the judge's bench, I opened the accounts, and went 
through them all from beginning to end. I got the whole drawn out by 
double entry, and got numbers for ever} 7 voucher. The result plainly 
was, that so far from their being a just balance of eleven hundred pounds 
against our poor devil, there actually was a balance of seven hundred 
pounds in his favor, although the poor slovenly blockhead did not know- 
it himself! When uiy turn came, I made the facts as clear as possible 
to judge and jury, and the jury inquired 'if they couldn't And a verdict 
of seven hundred pounds for Mr. ? I just tell you the circum- 
stance," continued O'Connell, "to show you that I kept an eye on that 
important branch of my profession." 

Another time O'Connell told the following odd story: 

" I remember being counsel at a special commission in Kerry, against 

a Mr. S , and having occasion to press him somewhat hard in my 

speech, he jumped up in the court, and called me 'a purse-proud block- 
head.' I said to him : ' In the first place, I have got no purse to be 
proud of; and, secondly, if I be a blockhead, it is the better for you, as 
I'm counsel against you. However, just to save you the trouble of say- 
ing so again, I'll administer a slight rebuke;' whereupon I whacked 
him soundly on the back with the president's cane. Next day he sent 
me a challenge by William Ponsonby, of Crottoe; but very shortly after 
he wrote to me to state, that since he had challenged me he had discov- 
ered that my life was inserted in a valuable lease of his. ' Under these 
circumstances,' he continued, ' I cannot afford to shoot you, unless, as a 
precautionary measure, you first insure your life for my benefit. If you 
do, then hey for powder and ball! I'm your man.' Now this seems 
so ludicrously absurd, that it is almost incredible; yet it is literally true. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 159 



was a very timid man — yet he fought six duels ; in fact, he fought 



them all out of pure fear." 

The foregoing anecdote is certainly a very singular one. I have taken 
it from Mr. Daunt's "Personal Eecollections." If that gentleman were 
under no misconception in reporting the particulars of this occurrence, 
it would appear that not merely was O'Connell on this occasion grossly 
insulted in open court, but that, moreover, he inflicted personal chas- 
tisement on the offending party in open court. Making every allowance 
for the manners of the days of our grandfathers, anything like this 
seems to border on the incredible. Yet even so, in all probability, Mr. 
Daunt's version of O'Connell's story is a perfectly accurate narrative of 
what actually occurred. " Truth is often stranger than fiction," as the 
hackneyed proverb runs. Assuming, then, that the account which I 
have given of this adventure of Dan's be strictly true, it suggests the 
strangest idea of what the state of society in Ireland must, in certain 
respects, have been during the earlier portion of our hero's public life. 

Mr. Primrose of Hilgrove (it was at this gentleman's place that the 
anecdote about the squabble in the court-house was related) adverted 
to Judge Jackson's calumny against O'Connell (this was vented much 
later than the period of our hero's life with which we are dealing in this 
chapter), promulgated on the authority of Mr. Eobert Twiss. 

"Ay, Bob — poor Bob!" said O'Connell. "I remember a good hit 
the late Archdeacon Day made at Bob. While Bob was high-sheriff of 
Kerry, I dined in his company one day, in Tralee. There was a riot in 
the street, and Bob was desirous to interpose his authority. ' Oh, let 
them fight it out!' exclaimed the archdeacon. 'No, no; I'll pacify 
them,' answered Bob; and he accordingly rushed out into the street, 
and set about pacifying the people by knocking down one man on the 
right and another on the left, crying out all the while, ' I'm the high- 
sheriff! I'm the high-sheriff!' A fellow who did not care for dignitaries 
soon made a low sheriff of him, by bestowing a blow on his head that 
stunned him. Poor Bob was brought back into the house insensible ; 
but his head, when examined, was found not to have sustained the least 
fracture. When he revived, Archdeacon Day congratulated him, saying, 
'How providential, Bob, that your skull was so thick V " 

For the sake of a little variety, I shall turn aside, for a brief space 



160 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

longer, from O'Connell's exclusively forensic recollections and give one or 
two additional sketches of a somewhat different complexion. I shall 
proceed to give a sketch of "the liberator" sitting for his portrait. I 
must confess, that in introducing this sketch at this part of my biogra- 
phy I am anticipating events considerably; for the sitting, which I am 
about to bring before the reader's notice, took place many a long year 
later than the period of O'Connell's history at which we have arrived. 
Nevertheless, I think it may be more convenient to bring it in here than 
at a later stage of the work, where the continuous and absorbing interest 
of his political career will leave room for few digressions to topics of 
lighter importance. 

"One morning in February" (1841), Mr. Daunt tells us, "I was 

present when IT , the portrait-painter, called to take O'Connell's 

likeness, for a picture which was destined to commemorate some Reform 
meeting. Portrait-painters generally keep their sitters in conversation 
for the purpose of bringing out the expression of the face. I was 

amused with II 's exuberant flippancy. Mr. O'Connell was narrating 

an instance of his own forensic and political success at some provincial 
assizes, and the patchwork effect produced in his narrative by his 
auditors incessant exclamations was ludicrous enough. 

" ' I made,' said he, 'a long speech on the occasion.' 

" ' Yes, yes ; a long speech — excellent !' 

"'And I was listened to at lust with silence, but, by and by, the 
jury began to cheer, and the crowd in the court-house cheered.' 

'"To be sure, to be sure — capital !' 

" 'And I thought the judge looked as if he was going to eheer too.' 

" ' Cheer too? No doubt, no doubt ! Very good. Please turn a little 
to the left, sir — that's just it.' 

"'But on the following clay I had a still stronger proof of my 
success.' 

" 'Ay, ay; so I should suppose.' 

" 'A sturdy Presbyterian farmer, a fellow who had been a great leader 
anions: the Orangemen of the neighborhood, and a bitter hater of the 
Catholics, came up to the parish priest, whom he met upon the road — ' 

'"To the parish priest? Ha! : 

"'And offered to shake hands with him.' 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 1Q1 

" ' Shake hands with the priest? Bless my soul !' 

" ' And the priest, astonished at this familiarity from such a quarter — ' 
" * No doubt ! He must have been amazingly surprised !' " ' Expressed 
his amazement good-humoredly, and asked the man, in the course of 
conversation, if he had been in court on the preceding day — ' 

"'In court? Tes, yes. Yery good. May I ask you to hold up 
that sheet of white paper to the left of your face ; it reflects the light 
upon it. There — precisely so.' 

" 'I was in court,' replied the man, 'and a greater change has been 
produced upon my mind than I could have thought possible.' 

"'Ha!' "'I heard Counsellor O'Connell, and till then I always 
thought he was a rough, blustering fellow, who wanted to carry all his 
ends by bullying and threats — ' " ' Ha !' 

" ' But, instead of that, he appealed to our reason, and not to our 
fears, and did so with all possible courtesy and gentleness.' 

" 'Precisely so,' cried H . 'With all possible courtesy and gen- 
tleness. Admirable! Excellent! A most intelligent fellow. Please 
to hold the paper somewhat higher up. I flatter myself this will be a 
likeness. Since you last sat to me, I have been honored with a sitting 
by his grace the duke of Wellington. His grace is exceedingly agree- 
able — has much more humor than one would suppose — kept telling 
anecdotes the whole time he sat, and told them right well.' 

" 'Tes,' said O'Connell, 'he has seen so much of life that he must 
have gained materials for being entertaining. He must, I suppose, 
abound in guard-room sort of stories. We cannot but admit he is a 
first-rate corporal.' " 

Mr. Daunt remarks "that it was scarcely possible to speak on any 
subject which did not elicit an anecdote from the stores of O'Connell's 
recollection." Here is a story of native Kerry dexterity, which "the 
liberator" told that gentleman with infinite glee: 

"One day during the war James Connor and I dined at Mr. Ma- 
hony's, in Dublin, and after dinner we heard the newsvenders, as usual, 
calling out, ' The Post ! The Dublin Evening Post ! Three packets in 
to-night's post!' The arrival of the packets was at that time irregular, 
and eagerly looked for. We all were impatient for the paper, and Ma- 
hony gave a five-penny piece to his servant, a Kerry lad, and told him 



162 THE LIFE OF DANIEL COONNELL. 

to go down and buy the Post. The boy returned in a minute with a 
Dublin Evening Post, which, on opening, we found, to our infinite cha- 
grin, was a fortnight old. The roguish newsvender had pawned off an 
old paper on the unsuspecting Kerry tiger. Mr. Mahony stormed, Con- 
nor and I laughed, and Connor said, 

"'I wonder, gossoon, how you let the fellow cheat you? Has not 
your master a hundred times told you that the dry papers are always 
old and good for nothing, and that the new papers are always wet from 
the printing-office ? Here's another live-penny. Be off, now, and take 
care to bring us in a ivtt Post.' 

"'Oh, never mind the live-penny, sir,' said the boy; 'I'll get the 
paper without it;' and he darted out of the room, while Mahony cried 
out, 'Hang that young blockhead, he'll blunder the business again.' 

"But in less than five minutes the lad re-entered with a fresh wet 
newspaper. TVe were all surprised, and asked him how he had managed 
to get it without money. 

" 'Oh, the asiest way in life,' said the urchin. ' I just took the dry 
ould Post, and cried it down the street a bit — " Dublin Evening Post! 
Dublin Evening Postl" and a fool of a gentleman meets me at the corner 
and buys my ould dry paper. So I whips across to a newsman I sits 
over the way and buys this fine, fresh, wet, new Post for your honor, with 
the money I got for the ould one.' " 

I shall next present t<> the reader O'Connell's story of a Connaught 
duellist, named Blake. Tins gentleman had been called out to take his 
chance of "shivering on a daisy." All the parties concerned mel ;ii the 
appointed time and place, except Blake's second. Like the knights and 
nobles in "Lara"' waiting for the appearance of Sir Ezzelin, tiny de- 
layed the proceedings Mime minutes, but all in vain; Blake's second 
failed to put in an appearance 

"It is a pity," quoth Blake, "to keep you waiting any longer, gen- 
tlemen;" and opening his pistol-case (which had hem placed in his car- 
riage by the absent second), he deliberately snapped one of the pistols 
at his opponent. 

On finding that it did not go off, he began very coolly to hammer 
away at the flint, saying, "Fire away, sir! I'll be ready for you in no 
time!" 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 163 

While he spoke, his second came galloping up, with many apologies 
for his absence ; but on seeing that the parties had already commenced 
hostilities, he not unnaturally expressed great astonishment, 

"Egad, I snapped my pistol," said Blake, upbraidingly, "and it 
missed fire." 

"Of course it did," replied the second; "you know it was not 
charged." 

"Not charged?" cried Blake; "and pray of what use is a case of 
pistols if they are not charged?" 

O'Connell used to tell of a case in which he was engaged profession- 
ally. It was an action instituted by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson 
Hawkesworth for a breach of promise of marriage. 

"Hawkesworth," said O'Connell, speaking of this affair to his agi- 
tating staff one day they were returning from a repeal meeting held at 
Drogheda, "had certainly engaged the lady's affections very much. He 
had acquired fame enough to engage her ambition. He was a crack 
preacher — had been selected to preach before the lord-lieutenant — his 
name occasionally got into the newspapers, which then was not often 
the case with private persons; and no doubt this notoriety had its 
weight in the lady's calculations. Things are changed in this respect, 
my dear Tom," continued O'Connell, turning to his "Head Pacificator," 
the well-known and very eccentric Tom Steele, who was one of his trav- 
elling companions on this occasion; "now the difficulty is for some 
people to keep out of the newspapers!" [What would O'Connell have 
said had he lived to glance his eye over some of the New York and other 
American journals %)ublished in this actual year of grace 1872 ? How he 
wotdd stare at their columns of " intervieivings" and other sensational per- 
sonalities, before which European journalistic gossip and sensationalism 
must hide their diminished heads!) "If I, for example," proceeded "the 
liberator," "go to see the Belleisle frigate, next morning it's all in print! 
and who were along with me, and how we were received on board, just 
as if we were princes! But to return to Hawkesworth. The corre- 
spondence read upon the trial was comical enough. The lady, it ap- 
peared, had at one period doubted his fidelity ; whereupon the parson 
writes to reassure her in these words : ' Don't believe any one who says 
I'll jilt you. They lie who say so ; and I pray that all such liars may 



104 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

be condemned to an eternity of itching without the benefit of scratching.' 
Three thousand pounds damages were given against him. He was un- 
able to pay, and decamped to America upon a preaching speculation, 
which proved unsuccessful. He came back to Ireland, and married the 
prosecutrix !" 

During this same journey, when approaching from the village of Ash- 
bourne to Dublin, some objects of antiquity which Grose had illustrated 
recalled that antiquary to "the liberator's'' mind. 

"Grose," said he, "came to Ireland full of strong prejudices against 
the people; but they gave way beneath the influence of Irish drollery. 
He was very much teased, while walking through the Dublin markets, 
by the butchers besetting him for his custom. At last he got angry, and 
told them all to go about their business; when a sly, waggish butcher, 
deliberately surveying Grose's fat, ruddy face and corpulent person, said 
to him, 'Well, please your honor, I won't ax you to buy. since it puts 
your honor in a passion ; but I'll tell you how you'll sarve me— -just tell 
aU your friends thai it's I that supply you with your mate, and, never fear. 
I'll have custom enough." 

Among the professional reminiscences of O'Connell may be men- 
tioned the story of "Duke O'Neill's will." This will was a singular and, 
in spite of its downright rascality, somewhat laughable fraud, which for 
a time inspired a lot of gullible mortals with visionary hopes of becom- 
ing rich by the division of a colossal fortune. The cheat originated in 
this wise: A smart, unscrupulous attorney's cleric, desirous of treating 
himself to a pleasanl summer excursion at other people's expense, 
forged a document, which purported to be the last will and testament 
of a certain grandee of Spain, the Duke O'Neill, who had died without 
leaving offspring in that land of romance, after having amassed the vast 
sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds. This noble fortune, 
according to the provisions of the duke's will, was to be divided, share 
and share alike, between all his Hibernian cousins bearing the illustrious 
name of O'Neill, and within the fortieth degree of kindred! The con- 
coctor of this precious imposition lost no time in directing his footsteps 
to the province of Ulster, where, with sublime effrontery, he introduced 
himself at many houses with the story of the Hiberno-Spanisb grandee's 
magnificent bequest. The plausibility of the knave's statements c\;m \ - 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 165 

where secured him a hospitable reception. In addition to getting into 
snug quarters, he made a pretty tidy sum by selling copies of the forged 
document tc every O'Neill who was green enough to present him with 
the moderate amount of half a crown for a neatly-engrossed duplicate. 
In short, the trick was, for a time, quite a success ; and presently sev- 
eral sturdy northern farmers, and even a Liverpool merchant, all bearing 
the royal name of their imaginary princely relative, made application to 
O'Connell for his professional advice and assistance in recovering their 
shares of the splendid windfall which awaited the lucky O'Neills within 
the' fortieth degree of cousinship to the duke. 

I had better let O'Connell himself describe the awakening of the poor 
humbugged O'Neills from their idle dreams of bags of doubloons and 
chateaux en Espagne (castles in Spain or in the air). 

"Nothing," said he, "could exceed their astonishment when I assured 
them the whole thing was a delusion. 

" ' Do you really tell us so, counsellor?' 

" ' Indeed I do,' said I. 

" ' And now we hope you wouldn't lay it on your conscience to deceive 
us. Do you really tell us, after all. that there's nothing at all to be got V 

" 'Indeed, I can assure you with a very safe conscience,' said I, 'that 
it is all a fabrication, and if an oath was required to confirm the fact. I 
could very safely give one.' 

"So away they went, indignant at the fraud, and lamenting that 
they had ever put faith in the tale of the 'ould duke.' " 

On one occasion, as O'Connell was passing Belan, the deserted abode 
of the earls of Alclborough, he repeated Hussey Burgh's epigram on the 
hand which in former days adorned an old finger-post near the gate. 
To understand the point of the epigram, it should be borne in mind 
that, in O'Connell's earlier days, the noble daughters of the Stratford 
family (Stratford is or was the family name of the Aldboroughs) were 
aotorious for what is now euphemistically styled kleptomania : 

"Great Jupiter! could I command 
Promethean fire to warm that hand, 

Give it tenacity and feeling, 
Then fix, thus vivified, the fist 
Upon my sympathetic wrist, 

Oh ! what a hand 'twould be for stealing 1" 



166 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Thus, then, there existed in those days a strongly -marked national 
character common to the universal Irish people, sprung though they were 
from various stocks. In spite of gradual changes of habits, this national 
character still survives. But as, in speaking of the external aspect of the 
island, I maintained that, along with the general characteristics of Irish 
scenery "to be found, in a greater or less degree, in most parts of the 
island, each province, or even each county, has peculiar features of its 
own; and even within these smaller tracts the variety of scenery is 
sometimes endless and marvellous beyond all expectation," so, in addi- 
tion to the general characteristics of our people, the Irishman of each 
district or locality has more or less peculiar features of his own, both 
physical and moral. In some parts the original Celtic blood is very 
little modified by that of the subsequent races of invaders. In some 
districts the Danish blood strongly asserts its presence, in some the 
Norman, in some the Saxon. As the degrees of admixture vary, so do 
the qualities of the people; and even counties almost purely Celtic 
differ more or less in the characteristics of their inhabitants. Remark- 
able indeed are the varieties to be found in the Irish character as it 
displays itself in the different localities of the isle. The stalwart. Roman- 
featured, stern to strangers, reserved but, at bottom, warm-hearted Tip- 
perary-man; the lithe-formed, subtle and fiery Celt of Cork and Kerry; 
the hardy, much-enduring, naturally courteous and hospitable Celt of 
Connaught, ever clinging tenaciously to the customs and traditions and 
language of ln-> forefathers; the man of Leinster with an admixture in bis 
veins of almost equal proportions of Danish and Norman and Saxon 
blood, the old Celtic blood, however, still preponderating; the sturdy, 
independent "Black Northern," with a large element of the "canny 
Scot" in his character, — all these varieties of the Irish race, while they 
have a certain broad family resemblance to each other, at the same time 
boast, each of them, strongly-marked individualisms. 

Of the changes that have gradually taken place in our manners and 
customs since the days when O'Connell was winning his forensic laurels, 
one of the most striking is the passing away of the race of "fire-eaters," 
as the Irish duellists were called. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. -[Q<J 

There was a chivalry in this duelling craze that in this age cannot 
be well understood. It was truly Celtic. The Celtic character de- 
manded reparation for insult, and so highly strung were their elements 
of feeling that reparation could only be found in honorable fight. 
Whether it was a fight to death or only an exchange of shots mattered 
not one whit; and as a rule, the exchange of shots satisfied the honor 
of both parties. 

Now-a-days an aggrieved individual demands "an apology." The 
keen perception of the Celtic race would not, at that time, accept an 
apology as sufficient reparation for a wrong ; there seemed to exist a 
kind of impression that blood alone could satisfy injustice or insult. 
And as a matter of fact the knowledge that such a plenary result 
followed insult, prevented the ungallantries which we to-day observe in 
every nationality. 

We mortals are a curious kind ; fear alone exerts us to right. Laws 
are made that make duelling criminal; but, if the subject were only 
properly sifted, it would be found that this fact (the fashion of duelling) 
had much to say to the world-admitted gallantry and chivalry of the 
Irish gentleman. 

But the fascination of the danger and the "honor" of the thing in- 
creased the craze; and after a little time, the slightest provocation 
demanded a duel. The contagion spread more rapidly because the 
leaders of the country indulged in the "pastime," as Grattan called it. 
But the abuse of a usage, for whatever good intention, is dangerous, 
and almost certain to develop wrong and unhappiness. 

Before long we shall see O'Connell himself "killing his man." 
Before he made his final resolve to abstain from duelling altogether, 
he had other "affairs of honor" on his hands. Elections, however, 
which then sometimes lasted for weeks, were the great scenes where 
the skill and courage of "fighting counsel" were displayed. The 
candidates, too, would occasionally meet to exchange shots; but it 
was absolutely necessary that their counsel, whatever their knowledge 
of the law of elections might be, should at least be gentlemen of 
"fire-eating" proclivities. Bully Egan, who did a great election- 
eering business, is said by some to have fought no less than fourteen 
duels. This sort of thing lasted far into the present century. At a 



168 THE LIFE OF DAXIE^ CCONNELL. 

Clare election, long after the union, one of these usually belligerent bar- 
risters, Mr. Tom O'M , astonished a friend by his pacific demeanor. 

" Why, Tom," said the friend, "you are wondrously quiet. How does it 
happen that you haven't kicked up some shindy?" 

" Because my client hasn't paid me my fighting price," coolly replied 
this Swiss of the bar. 

Probably the last Irish election duel between opposing counsel was 
that between Casserly and Baker, at one of the Mayo elections, where 
Kobert Dillon Browne and Patrick Somers, two of Dan's "tail,"* as his 
parliamentary followers were nicknamed, stood for that county on the 
liberal side. In the early period of the election things were all going 
against Browne and Somers. When they met in counsel over a bottle at 
night, Browne, who was a clever wag, determined to play on the maudlin- 
patriotic feelings of his counsel, Casserly. " It's enough to make a man 
sick," said he with well-acted weariness and disgust; "there is no such 
thing as real patriotism remaining in Ireland any longer." 

"What do you mean, Mr. Browne?" said Casserly, in bewilderment- 
he was, as sailors say, "three sheets to the windward" by this time — 
" Tm a real patriot, Mr. Browne." And then he brought his fist down 
heavily on the table. 

"Where's the use," said Browne, "of talking that sort of bombastic 
stuff? If you ivere a patriot, you wouldn't let Baker have it all his own 
way, and humbug you to your face the way he's doing." 

"What's that you say Baker's doing? humbugging me to my face?" 

"I say he's putting his finger in your eve," cries Browne, with a ges- 
ture of vehement emphasis. 

"Mr. Browne," says Casserly, rising excitedly and stretching forth his 
hand, "give me your hand. You'll see to-morrow morning whether 
Baker — and be d — d to him! — can put his linger in my eye!" 

They separated, Casserly in a high fever of pot-valor. But it wasn't 
all pot-valor. When the fumes of Bacchus had evaporated, there re- 
mained a residuum of genuine combativeness and unreasoning wrath ; 

for at the hustings the next morning, the moment the election proc I- 

ings were about to recommence, without preface, explanation or apology, 

* Probably this nickname was applied od acoouat of Dan's claims to Celtic chieftainship. 
The immediate followers or suite of a Highland Scotch chief were called his " tail." 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 16$ 

Casserly started to his feet, shook his fist at Baker and roared out, 
"Baker, you're a scoundrel, and the counsel of a scoundrel!" Immedi- 
ately Baker's blood was up; he intimated to Casserly in plain terms 
(hat he'd make him smell powder for his wanton insult. 

The sequel may easily be guessed— how, in the course of the day, 
Baker sent a hostile message ; how Casserly was only too glad to give 
him gentlemanly satisfaction ; how they fought, Casserly hitting Baker 
in the hip, giving the surgeons a neat job, and Baker, to the best of my 
recollection, a permanent limp. The moment he hit his antagonist, Cas- 
serly turned to Browne, who (I am almost sure) was his second, and said, 
with a peculiar leer, " Didn't I do that pretty well, Mr. Browne?" 

It is hardly necessary to add, that after this exploit the affairs of 
Browne and Somers went on swimmingly. The interests of their oppo- 
nents fell into confusion and collapsed — no tallies ready at the proper 
time. Voters weren't brought up to the scratch ; no one to keep up the 
legal quibblings and wranglings. Henceforward the conservatives were 
nowhere at the poll. It was all but a walk over the course. In fine, 
Messrs. Browne and Somers were declared duly elected. 

At the county Wexford election, in 1810, the rival candidates, Alcock 
and Colclough, fought a duel which ended tragically. Alcock had threat- 
ened Colclough with vengeance if he should dare to accept the votes of 
one of his friend's tenants. "Receive them at your peril!" said he. 
Colclough replied with spirit, that " he wouldn't be bullied into refusing 
them." In the duel which followed, and at which a crowd (including 
many magistrates) was present, Colclough was shot through the heart. 
Of course, Alcock was returned for the county. At the next assizes, 
however, he was tried for the murder of Colclough; but the judge, Baron 
Smith, charged warmly in his favor, and the jury acquitted him. 

This outrageous state of society was the result of many causes. The. 
partisans of the Ascendency were unrestrained and irresponsible — more 
like a lawless garrison than peaceful citizens ; they had come into the 
country by violence, they might be driven out by violence ; their position 
was insecure, consequently they were chronically restless and turbulent. 
The lax principles and dissolute morals of the viceregal court fostered 
this riotous and diseased state of society. The Catholics, on the other 
hand, down-trodden and especially liable to insult, were compelled to 



170 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

resort to the pistol as their readiest means of self-assertion and of main- 
taining some share of self-respect, Indeed, it was often their sole pro- 
tection against the insolence of the Ascendency bigots. Besides, a brave 
people, having no legitimate career open to their valor, are sure to become 
nervously sensitive about the point of honor, and in all cases where their 
bravery may be called in question they will seek to prove themselves 
brave by engaging in any and every eccentric and irregular adventure 
that may chance to turn up. Gradually they will feel themselves at 
home even in tavern riot and street rowdyism — in disorders of all sorts. 
I have seen it stated somewhere that Irish duels began to be more fre- 
quent after the disbanding of the portion of James the Second's army, 
that remained at home when the treaty of Limerick terminated the 
"Williamite wars. Numbers of the ex-officers of the Irish army had high 
pretensions, with poor means to support them. In their fallen fortunes 
they were probably inclined sometimes to exaggerate their claims to 
consideration. Unreasonably sensitive to anything approaching a slight, 
naturally they would gradually become quarrelsome and prone to insist 
on the arbitrament of the pistol. All these causes, acting in combina- 
tion with the admitted excitability of the Irish race, are perhaps enough 
to account for the terrible frequency of duels in Ireland up to a recent 
period. 

Alter the story of the union it is superfluous to say that the method 
by which some of these nobles acquired their titles was in the highest 
degree disreputable. O'Connell, when some of these living libels on 
true nobility would insolently flaunt abroad their pompous and lying 
pretensions and stand in the people's path, was always sure to wreak 
vengeance on them, by raking up the memories of their mean and cor- 
rupt origins and placing them in grotesque and ludicrous contrast with 
their present parade of grandeur. One of these pretenders had origin- 
ally been a wealthy merchant. As he amassed more and more money 
each day, he began to aspire after a place in the ranks of the aristoc- 
racy. At length he contrived to strike a bargain with the Irish minister 
that he should receive a title for the "consideration" of twenty thousand 
pounds. The patent was made out in due form, and the grub forthwith 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 171 

became a butterfly. The government, on their part, felt the most blissful 
confidence that the new nobleman would scrupulously fulfil his share of 
the bargain. In their unsuspecting trustfulness they had never dreamed 
of asking payment beforehand. When, however, six months had flown, 
and his lordship had apparently forgotten all about the price of his 
brand-new coronet, the Castle folks began to feel uneasy, and Mr. Secre- 
tary thought he might as well drop him a few confidential lines, just to 
remind him of their little bargain. 

If his lordship was somewhat slow in his payment, he made up for 
it by the promptness of his reply to the secretary's letter. His lordship 
was utterly astonished ; he didn't know what the secretary meant ; he 
to be a party to anything so corrupt as the sale or purchase of a peerage ! 
He could not help feeling indignant with the secretary for entertaining 
such an injurious idea for one moment. In short, his indignation was 
such that he threatened, should the audacious and unconstitutional 
claim be repeated, to rise in his place in the House of Peers and move 
for the impeachment of the minister. "The knowing ones" were jock- 
eyed. It was simply a neat "trick in trade" of the ex-merchant. 
Nothing was left for "the Castle" but "to grin and bear it." 

The Bruens of Carlow were high and mighty county grandees in 
O'Connell's days. For all I know to the contrary, they are so at this 
very minute. However, to borrow the words of that prince of witty 
satirists, Alexander Pope — 

"Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, 
From dirt and seaweed, as proud Venice rose," 

or, descending from poetic diction to plain prose, let us listen to O'Con- 
nell's matter-of-fact anecdote of the rise of old Bruen, the father of his 
contemporary and bitter political opponent, that great county magnate, 
Colonel Bruen. 

"Old Bruen," quoth O'Connell, at the dinner-table of the parish- 
priest of St. Mullins, in the county Carlow — " Old Bruen started in life 
with extremely limited finances, and derived his Avealth chiefly from 
successful and lucrative commissariat contracts in America. He also 
got a contract for supplying coffins for the soldiers, who died very fast 
from too free a use of new rum. The coffin contract he turned to excel- 
lent account, by the novel device of making one coffin serve the defunct 



172 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of a whole company. He had a sliding bottom to the coffin, which was 
withdrawn when over the grave, into which the deceased occupant then 
dropped, and was instantly earthed up, leaving the coffin quite available 
for future interments. As the worthy contractor checked his own ac- 
counts, he is said to have availed himself of all his contracts to an 
extent which, in the present clay, would be impossible, and which is 
almost incredible." 

O'Connell used also to tell the following anecdote of the sort of mili- 
tary patronage wielded formerly by some of the great lords of Ireland. 
There was a Wexford elector, who had been promised patronage by a 
member of the Loftus family (the head of the Loftuses is the marquis 
of Ely) in return for liis Note. Now, this Wexford elector had a son, 
whom he was most ambitious to see a sergeant of artillery. Lord Loftus, 
on demanding this post for the young lad, was told that it was quite 
impossible to comply with his request, inasmuch as a previous service 
of six years was necessary to qualify a candidate for the post of ser- 
geant in the artillery. " Docs it require six years' service to qualify him 
fur a lieutenancy?" demanded Lord Loftus. 

"Certainly not," was the answer. 
•Well, can't you make him a lieutenant, then?" rejoined my lord. 

'• Whereupon," O'Connell used to add, laughing heartily as he would 
finish the story, "the fellow was made a lieutenant, for no better reason 
than just because he wasn't fit to be a sergeant!" 

However, it would not be fair or honest to describe all the gentry of 
those days as ignoble and corrupt. I have already quoted Mr.Mitchel's 
remark about the union, in which he justly points out that, if there were 
unheard-of venality and baseness in the ranks of those lords and gen- 
tlemen who sat in the chairs of the House of Lords and on the benches 
of the House of Commons, there were likewise in the same ranks the 
loftiest examples of spotless and incorruptible integrity and honor. 
One of these true gentlemen — an aristocrat not merely from hie social 
position, but by God Almighty's patent of nobility — was Mr. Shap- 
land Carew, the member lor the county Wexford. Lord Castlereagh 
dared to call on this high-souled gentleman to offer him a peerage and 
other more solid advantages as the price for his vote in favor of the 
union. Of course Mi-. Carew spurned the bribe and the traitor to his 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 173 

country, who presumed to offer it. And, in doing so, he indignantly- 
exclaimed — 

" I will expose your insolent offer in the House of Commons to-night! 
I will get up in my place and charge you with the barefaced attempt to 
corrupt a legislator." 

"Do so, if you will," Castlereagh coolly replied; "but if you do, / 
will immediately get up and contradict you in the presence of the House 
— I will declare, upon my honor, that you have uttered a falsehood ; and 
I shall follow up that declaration by demanding satisfaction as soon as 
we are beyond the reach of the sergeant-at-arms !" 

Carew ordered the noble secretary to get out of his house as quickly 
as possible, if he wished to escape being kicked down the door-steps by 
his footman. Castlereagh retired at once. However, Mr. Carew did not 
think it advisable to denounce him that night in the House of Commons. 

The following profound and enlightened remarks by a famous French 
writer, Gustave de Beaumont, on O'Connell and the aristocracy, and the 
hostile relations in which they stood towards each other during the greater 
portion of O'Connell' s public career, find their proper place here, for they 
assist us to comprehend some of the difficulties with which O'Connell 
had all through to struggle, but especially, perhaps, in the earlier part 
of his political life ; and it is with the opening stages of his career as 
an agitator that we shall have to deal in the next chapter. 

Gustave de Beaumont says: "Whether O'Connell be considered as 
a revolutionist, a politician, an enthusiast, or the great leader of a party, 
in every case we are obliged to recognize his extraordinary power ; and 
what is especially remarkable in this power is, that it is essentially 
democratic. O'Connell was naturally, and by the mere fact of his polit- 
ical position in Ireland, the enemy of the aristocracy. This was a neces- 
sity. He could not be the man of the Irish and the Catholic people 
without being the adversary of the English oligarchy. Perhaps in no 
country is the representation of popular interests and passions so neces- 
sarily the fierce enemy of the upper classes as in Ireland, because there 
is not, almost, a country in the world where the separation between the 
aristocracy and the people is so open and complete as in Ireland. We 
must not then be astonished that O'Connell waged an eternal war against 
the aristocracy of Ireland. Nothing could restrain him in those attacks, 



174 THE LIFE OF DAX1EL O'COXXELL. 

which his passions suggested and his interests did not forbid. Nor must 
we be astonished if O'Connell, the idol of the people, provoked the bitter 
hostility of the upper ranks of society. There was not on earth another 
man so much loved and so much hated. The resentment of the Irish 
aristocracy was very natural." 

O'Connell used constantly to say of himself, "that he was the best- 
abused man in the world." Fortunately he was able to bear up against 
any amount of hostility, and return bitter word for bitter word. With 
respect to his antagonism to the Irish aristocracy, it was forced on him, 
just as it is forced on his countrymen, by the nature of things. Whether 
they like it or not, the adherents of the popular or national party in Ire- 
land are bound to be hostile to the nobles and landed gentry. The Irish 
people, indeed, naturally would rather lean to aristocracy. If they had 
an aristocracy of their own race, thoroughly sympathizing with their 
feelings and ideas and aspirations, in all probability they would look up 
to and cling to it devotedly. O'Connell himself was probably, both by 
natural and acquired taste, an aristocrat But, then, neither he nor his 
people had any choice, for the existing aristocracy of Ireland is. in 
reality, nut Irish, hut alien. It is for the most part alien in blood, and, 
still worse, it is almost entirely alien in education, in thought and in 
feeling. Even the few old Irish families are now Anglicized by con- 
tinual intermarriages with the English and by their thorough English 
training. Hence, then, the hitter hatred between O'Connell and his 
people on the one side and these anti-Irish Irishmen of the upper classes 
on the other. 

As this chapter has been, in a great degree, one of light, humorous 
sketches and anecdotes, and as we are about to commence the more 
serious, if not drier, details of our hero's political career in the next, I 
may as well terminate this one by another specimen of O'Connell's 
humorous vein. Indeed, I shall on this occasion exhibit him in his 
broadest and most farcical mood; I shall show him giving way to an 
utter abandonment to fun and frolic. The incident I am about to give 
has often been told before, and some of my readers may deem it too 
outrageous a piece of burlesque — some even may deem it too coarse a 
passage to be introduced into the biography of a great politician. At 
all such fastidious readers and their criticisms, I fear I shall be discour- 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 175 

teous enough to laugh heartily. I cannot sacrifice a scene that I deem 
characteristic (I have little doubt of its authenticity) to soothe their 
delicacy. Let them leave untasted whatever seems likely to offend their 
literary palates. I entirely agree with Lord Macaulay in deriding all 
such conventional notions of the dignity of biography, or even of his- 
tory, as would compel a writer to sacrifice to an effeminate or " stuck- 
up" sort of fastidiousness of taste incidents or conversations strikingly 
illustrative of character, because they may have certain elements of 
coarseness or even vulgarity. Without further preface, then, I shall 
proceed to give the reader O'Connell's famous encounter with Biddy 
Moriarty. 

This most whimsical and droll adventure took place in the earlier part 
of our hero's life. As I have, I trust, sufficiently demonstrated ere this, 
his great abilities were rapidly recognized after he was called to the bar. 
His friends and acquaintances in particular had great faith in his 
powers, above all in his powers of vituperation. Even in those early 
days of his career his familiars believed him to be "a devil of a dust." 

But at this period there dwelt in Dublin a dame who was fairly 
entitled to enter the lists with him as a scold. Her name was Biddy 
Moriarty, and she kept a huckster's stall on the quays, nearly op- 
posite the Four Courts. This interesting specimen of "the fairer and 
better sex," to borrow an oft-repeated expression of our hero's, belonged 
to the highest order of viragos. When she gave you a salutation with 
her fist, you didn't at all like it, but you found a rasping with the rough 
side of her tongue still less agreeable. In Dublin the fame of her abu- 
sive volubility had attained the highest pitch. Her celebrity had even 
extended to the provinces. It was generally believed that she had done 
more to enrich the Dublin slang vocabulary than all preceding masters 
and mistresses of the art of Billingsgate ; her expressions were everywhere 
quoted ; her brazen impudence, in short, had become proverbial all over 
the island. Notwithstanding all this, some of Dan's friends, in their 
boundless confidence in his tongue-prowess, believed implicitly that, if 
he "tackled" her, he would prove more than a match for the redoubt- 
able Biddy at her own weapons. Dan himself, indeed, having already 
had the advantage of hearing her give a slight "taste of her quality" 
on one or two occasions, was modest enough to entertain some misgiv- 



176 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

ings on this score. One day, however, some individuals in a company, 
where our hero was present, expressed more than doubts; they even 
ridiculed the notion of his being able to stand before Biddy for a mo- 
ment. This at once put Dan on his mettle; for he hated to confess 
inferiority in anything or the possibility of his being defeated ; he de- 
clared himself equally ready to meet the Amazon and to bet that he 
would floor her. Bets were at once made, and it was decided that the 
strife of tongues should "come off" without delay. 

The whole company sallied forth and hurried to the huckster's stall. 
There was the notorious Biddy presiding over the sale of her small mer- 
chandise. A few staring idlers, some of them innocent of soap and 
water, and tattered of garb, lounged around. Biddy, as a renowned 
"character" and one of the "sights" of the Irish metropolis, was of 
course the object of their curiosity or interest. The audience, including 
O'Connell's companions, was now quite numerous enough to excite the 
heroine, once provoked to the conflict, to give a full display of her richest 
flowers of rhetoric. O'Connell was now eager for the combat and con- 
fident of triumph. He had already hit upon an ingenious plan for the 
terrible Biddy's overthrow. Resolving to take the initiative, our hero 
thus began his attack : 

"What's the price of this walking-stick, Mrs. What's-your-name?" 

"Moriarty, sir, is my name, and a good one it is; and what have 
you to say agen it? and one-and-sixpence's the price of the stick. 
Troth, it's chape as dirt — so it is." 

"One-and-sixpenco! whew! Why, you are no better than an im- 
postor, to ask eighteen pence for what cost you two pence." 

"Two pence! your grandmother!" replied Biddy, at one waxing 
irascible. "Do you mane to say that it's cheating the people I am? 
Impostor, indeed!" 

"Ay, impostor; and it's that I call you to your teeth," rejoined 
O'Connell. 

"Come, cut your stick, you cantankerous jackanapes!" quoth Biddy, 
her face groAving redder every moment. 

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, you old diagonal!" returned 
O'Connell, in the calmest possible tone. The effect of this calmness on the 
excitable nerves of the fair lady was even more irritating than his abuse. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 177 

"Stop your jaw, you pug-nosed badger!" exclaimed Mrs. Moriarty, 
"or by this and that, I'll make you go quicker nor you came." 

" Don't be in a passion, my old radius!" said our hero, still preserv- 
ing the most provoking coolness in his voice and demeanor; " anger will 
only wrinkle your beauty." 

" By the hokey, if you say another word of impudence, I'll tan your 
dirty hide, you bastely common scrub ! and sorry I'd be to soil my fists 
upon your carcase." 

"Whew! boys, what a passion old Biddy is in! I pretest, as I'm a 
gentleman — " 

"Jintleman! jintleman! the likes of you a jintleman ! Wisha, by 
gorry, that bangs Banagher! Why, you potato- faced pippin-sneezer! 
where did a Madagascar monkey like you pick up enough of common 
Christian dacency to hide your Kerry brogue ?" 

" Easy, now ; easy now," said Dan, with the same look and tone of 
easy, imperturbable good-humor; "don't choke yourself with fine lan- 
guage, you old whisky-drinking parallelogram /" 

"What's that you call me, you murderin' villain?" shouted Mrs. 
Moriarty, by this time goaded into perfect fury. 

"I call you," answered O'Connell, "a parallelogram; and a Dublin 
judge and jury will say that it's no libel to call you so." 

"Oh, tare-an-ouns ! oh, holy Biddy!" screamed Mrs. Moriarty, her 
eyes flaming like those of a tigress robbed of her whelps; "that an 
honest woman, like me, should be called a parrybellygrum to her face ' 
I'm none of your parrybellygrum s, you rascally gallows-bird ' jvw cow- 
ardly, sneaking, plate-lickin' blaguard!" 

" Oh ! not you, indeed !" retorted O'Connell. " Why, I suppose you'll 
deny that you keep a hypotheneuse in your house." 

"It's a lie for you, you bloody robber!" roared the raging virago; 
"I never had such a thing in my house, you swindling thief!" 

"Why, sure your neighbors all know very well that you keep not 
only a hypotheneuse, but that you have two diameters locked up in your 
garret, and that you go out to walk with them every Sunday, you heart- 
less old heptagon /" 

"Oh, hear that, ye saints in glory! Oh! there's bad language from 
a fellow that wants to pass for a jintleman ! May the divil fly away 



178 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



with you, you micher from Munster, and make celery-sauce of your 
rotten limbs, you mealy-mouthed tub of guts!" 

"Ah," persisted her arch-tormentor, "you can't deny the charge, you 
miserable submultiple of a duplicate ratio /" 

"Gro," vociferated the half-frantic scold, "go rinse your mouth in the 
Liffey, you nasty tickle-pitcher ! After all the bad words you spake, it 
ought to be filthier than your face, you dirty chicken of Beelzebub !" 

" Rinse your own mouth, you wicked-minded old polygon ! To the 
deuce I pitch you, you blustering intersection of a stinking superficies /" 

"You saucy tinker's apprentice! if you don't cease your jaw, I'll — " 
But here Biddy, utterly confounded by Dan's volley'd abuse, fairly gasped 
for breath. For the first time in her life, her foul-tongued volubility 
completely failed her. Unable to heave up another word, she stood, 
purple-visaged and foaming at the mouth, like a baffled fury. 

At the risk of giving her an immediate tit of apoplexy, our hero now 
relentlessly pursued his triumph. Without letting her have a moment's 
breathing-time, he poured in on the devoted Biddy broadside after broad- 
side of double-shotted scurrility: 

"While I have a tongue I'll abuse you, you most inimitable 'periph- 
ery I Look at her, boys! There she stands, a convicted perpendicular 
in petticoats! There's contamination in her circumference, and she trem- 
bles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah! you're 
found out, you rectilineal antecedent and cam : angular old hag! 'Tis with 
you the devil will fly away, you porter-swiping .similitude of the bisection 
of a vertex!" 

Astounded and overwhelmed with this cataract of vituperation, 
which, in being utterly incomprehensible to her, only "bothers" her 
the more, Biddy stands speechless, as though she were struck dumb by 
palsy. Still, albeit worsted, she is game to the last. Suddenly snatch- 
ing up a saucepan, she aims it at the head of our hero. But, ere it Hies 
from her hand, he very wisely contrives to beat a hasty retreat. 

There can be little doubt that on this occasion, at all events, "dis- 
cretion was the better part of valor." 

"You've won the wager, O'Connell; here's your bet," said the gen- 
tleman who had proposed the contrast. 

O'Connell displayed the same vivacious humor, the same ingenuity, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 179 



quickness and fertility of resources in this grotesque adventure that so 
often stood him in good stead in his more serious encounters through 
life. A man of mere ordinary smartness would have endeavored to meet 
Biddy with an exact imitation of her own customary style of Billings- 
gate, and his tirades would, as a necessary consequence, have been over- 
whelmed, in a few moments, by the furious ebullitions of the foul-mouthed 
virago. But O'Connell knew better than to be guilty of so stupid a 
blunder. He rightly calculated that the surest way to disconcert and 
confound her was to pour forth an unceasing torrent of loud-sounding 
sesquipedalian jargon, which to Dame Biddy's ears would necessarily be 
as unintelligible as "the unknown tongues" of the celebrated Edward 
Irving's disciples. In her ignorance, she would be sure to fancy the 
uncouth mathematical terminology some dark and unheard-of words of 
opprobriousness. In short, the collapse of Biddy's Billingsgate under 
the weight of Dan's jawbreakers somewhat resembled the fate of sol- 
diery, who, having long fought with good fortune on ground of a certain 
contour, with foes using arms and tactics like their own, are, at last, 
suddenly assailed on ground of a different configuration by antagonists 
employing novel arms and unusual manoeuvres. Lo ! completely taken 
by surprise, in the twinkling of an eye they lose all presence of mind, 
and, wanting resources to grapple with the unfamiliar difficulties, aban- 
don the field a panic-stricken rout ! 

It was my intention to close this chapter with the scene of Biddy 
Moriarty's overthrow. However, I may as well, before commencing an- 
other, add one more anecdote illustrative of our hero's incomparable power 
of putting down instantaneously a troublesome opponent by giving out, in 
one short nervous sentence, a good round volley of abusive epithets. A 
few words of his derisive drollery often outweighed another less popular 
advocate's elaborate speech of an hour. At nisi prius this turn foi 
comical satire aided him immensely. He would often so cover with 
mockery and ridicule both witnesses and the cause in behalf of which 
they were called up to testify, that real substantial grounds of complaint 
would be wholly lost sight of or appear simply absurd. The anecdote 
which I am about to give will make an excellent pendant to that 0/ 
Biddy Moriarty. As the story of Biddy's discomfiture seems to me 
authentic, so I think is this. But even if I had doubts of their an then- 



180 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ticity, I would still be inclined to give these anecdotes, for in any case 
they have a biographical value, as impressing on our minds a vivid 
picture of the Irish popular conception of Dan and his comical humors. 
But enough of this — to our story : 

O'Connell was once engaged in a case at the assizes of one of the towns 
on the Munster circuit. The attorney, on the side opposed to O'Connell's, 
was the most combative of mortals. Nothing delighted him so much 
as having a good fight ; this taste he always took care to gratify by being 
foremost in whatever scenes of political excitement occurred in his native 
town. His external appearance was significant of his moral and intel- 
lectual qualities. His face generally wore an audacious, threatening, 
contemptuous expression. He looked like some dogged pugilist. His 
hair wus as contrarious as his disposition; no amount of brushing could 
smooth it. Two eccentric locks, one on each temple, stood erect like 
horns, and were far from tending to mollify the fighting expression of 
his face. This fiery, spunky, wrangling limb of the law, whenever he 
addressed an audience, jerked out his short sentences, not destitute of a 
certain sort of ability, in a hissing tone of voice. 

Being an Orangeman, this odd character was anything but friendly 
to our hero. On the occasion in question he kept annoying O'Connell 
by every means in his power — one moment by improper interruptions, 
at another time by addressing the witnesses — in short, by all sorts of 
unwarrantable interference. Vainly did the barristers, associated with 
O'Connell in the cause, take him to task roughly; vainly did the judge 
repeatedly order him to keep quiet; up he would jump every other 
moment, interrupting the proceedings, hissing out the promptings of his 
bile, sometimes oxen vociferating uproariously. Nobody seemed able to 
keep this choleric Orange attorney at rest for five consecutive minutes. 
Finally, even while O'Connell was in the very act of urging a most im 
port ant question, he leaped up once more, quite unabashed, for the mere 
purpose of repeating for the hundredth time his outrageous interruption. 
But this overfilled the measure of our hero's wrath; he suddenly lost 
all patience. Turning around, with the rapidity of lightning and with 
his fiercest scowl, on (lie disturber of the peace, he roared in tones of 
thunder, "Sit down, you audacious, snarling, pugnacious ram-eat." 
Quick as the few words, that liit off, with such happy humor, the cha- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELU 181 

racter of the ''cantankerous" attorney, flew from his lips, shouts of 
laughter rang through the court. Boar followed roar. Judge, barris- 
ters and all were convulsed till the tears ran down their cheeks. In 
short, the laughter was inextinguishable as the mirth of the Homeric 
deities, that filled the halls of Olympus, when Vulcan got up to restore 
good-humor and harmony to the ruffled celestials by his limping efforts 
to hand round the nectar. 

Meanwhile the "pugnacious" limb of the law stood before O'Connell, 
like one transfixed — pale, tongue-tied, gasping with unutterable fury. 
All through the remainder of his life the nickname of "ram-cat" stuck 
to him.* 

* The books and authors to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : 
O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections of O'Connell;" Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" "Life and 
Times of O'Connell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street; "Curran's Speeches, edited, 
■with Memoir and Historical Notices," by Thomas Davis, Esq., M. R. I. A., Barrister-at-Law ; 
Cashel Hoey's " Memoir of Plunket ;" " The History of Ireland from its Union with Great 
Britain, in January, 1801, to January, 1810," by Francis Plowden, Esq. ; Mitchel's " History of 
Ireland ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Ireland and her Agitators ;" " Ireland Sixty Years Since ;" Barring- 
ton's "Personal Sketches;" "Reminiscences of Michael Kelly;" Writings of Lady Morgan; D« 
Beaumont's "I.rlande." 



CHAPTER VII. 

State of the Catholic cause ai the commencement of O'Connell's political career — 
Pitt's return to office — His power weakened — His falseness to Ireland and the 
Catholics — The Castle uses its influence with Lord Fingal to keep back the 
Catholic petition — Coronation of Napoleon — The Pope's allocution — The Cath- 
olics calumniated — Continued suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act — Duplicity of 

THE VICEROY, LORD HaRDWICKE — PlTT's PERFIDY; HE REFUSES TO PRESENT THE CATH- 
OLIC petition — It is presented by Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville — First appearance 
of Henry Grattan in the English House of Commons — His splendid speech for 
Catholic emancipation — Triumph of bigotry; the petition rejected by both 
Houses — Castlekeagh defeated at the Downshike election — Decline of Pitt's 
power; his death — "The ministry of all the talents'' — Great hopes of the 
Catholics — Fox's condemnation of the union — Bar address to Curran — Release ot 
Irish state-prisoners — Address of the Catholics to the new viceroy, the duke of 
Bedford — His viceroyai.ty disappoints their expectations — Jealousies and di- 
visions in the Catholic councils; the case of Mr. Ryan — O'Connell's amusing 
story of Peter Bodkin Hussey and the Catholic banker — Generous eloquence of 
Daniel O'Connell in the Catholic Committee — Death of Charles James Fox- 
Continuance of Orange license — The case of Mr. Wilson — Extortions of the 

TITHE-SYSTEM — " THE ThEESHEBS" — IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL STUDENTS INVITED TO FRANCE; 
CONSEQUENT INCREASE OF THE MaYNOOTH GRANT BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT — "CATH- 
OLIC officers' bill" — The king arbitrarily dismisses the ministry — The " No-Po- 
pery" administration comes into office — irish members on the effects of the 
onion and the pledges of british ministers — the catholic petition withheld on 
the motion of john keogh — o'connell supports him in a warm and even filial 
speech — Departure of the duke of Bedford from Ireland — Folly of the Dublin 

POP! LACK. 

EFOKE commencing the political life of O'Connell, it is neces- 
sary to take a hurried glance at the state of the Catholic cause 
when O'Connell first began to be one of its most prominent 
advocates. We have seen how, previous to the considerable 
concessions of 1793, the abilities and energy of Theobald Wolfe 
Tone and John Keogh had infused new life into the Catholic Committee. 
Two delegates from each county and great city had been associated with 
the original members, who were all residents of Dublin. These delegates 
were only to be summoned upon extraordinary occasions. Wolfe Tone, 
indeed, gives the credit of having planned this new arrangement to 




THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 183 

Miles Keon, of Keonbrook, county Leitrim. After 1793, no farther con- 
cessions had been made to the Catholic body. During the troubled 
years that passed, from the recall of Earl Fitzwilliam, in March, 1795, 
to 1804, the action of the committee was paralyzed. When the Catholic 
movement began to revive, only small meetings in private houses were 
held, owing to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, which continued 
till 1806. The first meeting of any great importance was held on the 
16th of February, 1805. At this, a deputation of noblemen and gentle- 
men were appointed to request Mr. Pitt to present the Catholic petition 
to the House of Commons. 

This minister had returned to office on May the 14th, 1804. It was 
only to serve a temporary purpose that he had suffered the imbecile 
Addington to hold the reins of power since his resignation in 1801. As 
soon as Addington presumed to appear independent of him, Pitt rallied 
his forces and drove him from office. The great minister's power, how- 
ever, was not now the same as of old. Addington resented the insult of 
being cashiered, so to speak, for incapacity. He used all his influence 
to raise up opposition to Pitt. The king, too, had been unfavorable to 
Pitt's restoration to the helm of state. 

Although Pitt had pretended that his resignation, in 1801, was in 
consequence of the king's refusal to consent to Catholic emancipation, 
yet, on returning to power, he made no condition in favor of that meas- 
ure. This clearly proves his falseness and treachery to the Catholics. 
The government prints kept up alarms about the French party in Ire- 
land and French invasions during the whole summer. All this was 
meant to justify the measures of defence and coercion which the min- 
isters resorted to in Ireland. There was an encampment of fifteen 
thousand men on the Curragh. Martello towers and other defensive 
works were pushed forward. Besides the prisoners already held, without 
visible cause, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the rigor 
of whose treatment was now sharpened, many additional persons were 
arrested. 

As the Catholics had been foolish enough, on his return to office, to 
rejoice publicly " in the benefit of having so many characters of emi- 
nence pledged not to embark in the service of government except on 
the terms of Catholic privileges being obtained." Pitt had reason to fear 



184 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXNELL. 

that the sincerity of his pledges would soon be tested. To prevent this, 
Sir Evan Nepean was instructed to endeavor to persuade the earl of 
Fingal, the highest in rank of the Irish Catholics, to influence his co-relig- 
ionists to hold back their petition. The aristocratic section of the com- 
mittee was generally in favor of postponing the time of petitioning. 
Lord Fingal was now frequently closeted at the Castle, invited to dine 
there — in short, sedulously courted. But it was all in vain. Pitt fore- 
saw that, even if he would, Lord Fingal could not very long keep back 
the petition of the Catholics. The crafty minister now tried to excite 
prejudice against their claims. For this purpose he took advantage of 
the circumstance of Napoleon's coronation as emperor by the Pope on 
the 28th of October, 1804. The ministerial papers set to work. Here 
was an ominous reconciliation of the emperor with the Church of Pome. 
Pitt's journals took care not to say a word about the emperor's having 
restored the Protestant as well as the Catholic Church in France, or that 
Protestants were emancipated in that country. Napoleon would hence- 
forth have vast influence in Ireland. Was there not a memorial, written 
by MacNeven at Paris, addressed to the Irish officers in foreign services, 
especially the Austrian, and calling on them to join in the intended 
attempts to free Ireland ? Did not the Holy Father, too, in the allocu- 
tion addressed to a secret consist oiv before his departure for Paris, speak 
of his gratitude to Napoleon and add "that a personal interview with 
the emperor would he for the good of the Catholic Church, which is (lie 
only ark of sal rut ion? 1 

Was it any wonder that this last assertion almost frightened the life 
out of all the bigoted old women of both sexes? Everything seemed to 
portend the arrival of Napoleon in Ireland to overthrow the venerable 
institutions of " Church and State." The dungeons of the Inquisition 
were about to yawn for all heretics. 

Parliament met on the 15th of January, 1805. Sir Evan Nepean 
succeeded in procuring the renewal of the suspension of the Habeas Cor- 
pus Act. He was warmly opposed on this occasion by Charles James 
Fox. But now the fate of the Catholic petition was to be determined. 
In spite of the manoeuvres of the Castle, it was decided at the meeting 
of the 16th of January, to which I have referred in the opening paragraph 
of this chapter, that Lord Fingal and others should take the petition to 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 185 

London. The viceroy, Lord Hardwicke, now changed his tactics. He 
had no intention, indeed, of seriously recommending the petition. " He 
had been selected," says Mr. Plowden, "from the mass of the peerage as 
the best qualified to resist the emancipation of Ireland under the insid- 
ious mission of reconciling her to thraldom." But having the minister's 
assurance of a decided majority against the petition, he affected to favor 
the Catholics by discountenancing counter-petitions. To prove his sin- 
cerity, he even dismissed the notorious Jack Giffard for having carried 
in the Dublin corporation some violent resolutions against emancipation. 
Such was Lord Hardwicke' s duplicity. 

The Catholic deputies had their conference with Pitt on the 12th of 
March, 1805. He said " that the confidence of so very respectable a 
body as the Catholics of Ireland was highly gratifying to him," but at 
the same time civilly refused to present the petition ; the time hadn't 
come, there were obstacles. He didn't, however, tell them what was the 
fact, that on his return to office he had voluntarily engaged that he would 
never again bring the subject under the consideration of His Majesty. 
Finally, the delegates besought him merely to lay their petition on the 
table of the House of Commons ; they would even authorize him to state 
"that they did not press for the immediate adoption of the measure prayed 
for." Their self-prostration was all in vain. Mr. Plowden, who had the 
best means of knowing all about the conference, tells us that Mr. Pitt 
" drily repeated his negative ;" he said plainly that he should feel it his 
duty to resist the petition, and advised them to withdraw it. 

This was the reward the "leading Catholics" received from Pitt for 
consenting to the accursed union. He simply broke faith with them. 
They deserved little pity. They were not ashamed to merit one com- 
pliment, which on this occasion he deigned to pay them when he said 
" that he had read with satisfaction a copy of their petition, in which they 
very judiciously refrained from insisting upon the object of it as a matter 
of right and justice." Clearly, neither the hour nor the man for the achieve- 
ment of Catholic deliverance had yet come forth ; the true leader, however, 
who was destined to demand in thunder-tones the emancipation of his 
countrymen, not as a matter of expediency, but " as a matter of right and 
justice" was even then on his way ; no other than our hero, Daniel O'Con- 
nell, then the most rising young lawyer at the Irish bar ! 



186 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL 



Repulsed by Pitt, the Catholic delegates applied to Mr. Fox and Lord 
Granville with better success. It was presented in both Houses; by 
Lord Grenville in the Lords and Mr. Fox in the Commons, on the 25th 
of March. Debates on the petition subsequently took place in both 
Houses; that in the House of Lords commenced on the 10th of May, 
that in the House of Commons on the 13th of the same month. In the 
first of these debates, the duke of Cumberland, Lord Redesdale, Lord 
Carleton, Lord Aukland, and others displayed an almost incredible amount 
of violence and rabid bigotry. Lord Carleton raved about the prepar- 
ation "of maps of the forfeited estates to guide the proceedings of 
resumption." Lord Redesdale, however, bore off the palm for bigotry 
of the narrowest stamp. His wretched illiberality brought down on 
him a severe castigation from two Irish lords, Hutchinson and Ormond. 
The former said that "lie had been bred, educated and had spent the 
greater part of his life in Ireland, and never had witnessed, or even 
heard of, such fooleries and horrors as had been detailed by the learned 
lord, whom he challenged to verify his assertions by facts." The earl of 
Ormond denied the truth of Redesdale's statements. He said "he could 
not sit silent and hear the country to which he had the honor to belong 
so foully traduced, without rising to contradict such unfounded asper- 
sions upon the national character of Ireland." He spoke contemptu- 
ously of Redesdale's "old women's stories, which not the most preju- 
diced Protestant in Ireland would accredit," and hoped that, when he 
should return to the bench, he would learn to divest himself of his antipa- 
thies and partialities. Some English noblemen also spoke liberally. The 
earl of Albemarle, referring to Redesdale, said, "that the grave charac- 
ter of a judge, and the advantages of local experience and official duties, 
should not give weight to the vulgar prejudices and idle tales which 
had been retailed to the House by a noble and Learned lord with heat 
and animosity little becoming the gravity of his situation." Mail 
Spencer, Lord Holland, the earl of Suffolk, the duke of Norfolk, Earl 
Moira, supported the petition. The most amusing feature of the debate 
was that all the bigots disavowed bigotry and intolerance, and praised 
themselves highly for "their disposition to liberality and conciliation." 
On the division 1!) voted for going into committee, 178 against it, leav- 
ing a majority of 129 against the motion. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 187 

The peculiar incident of the debate in the House of Commons was 
that, on this occasion, the illustrious Grattan made his first appearance 
in the English Parliament. Since the disastrous nights of the union 
debates, his splendid eloquence had been unheard. He had not sought 
election from any constituency. It had recently occurred to Earl Fitz- 
william to secure the brilliant talents of Grattan for the coming debate. 
Lord Fitzwilliam was still friendly to the Catholics and mindful of the 
way in which he, as well as they, had been deluded by Pitt in 1795. 
He induced the Hon. C. L. Dundas to vacate his seat for the borough 
of Malton, in England, and Grattan was returned for it. The utmost 
anxiety to hear the great orator and stainless patriot pervaded the 
House. Charles James Fox had opened the debate in a long speech, 
which was also powerful, generous and enlightened. The notorious Dr. 
Paddy Duigenan, though he saw Grattan menacing him with Ms eye, 
had presumed to reply to Fox, in a speech of more than three hours' 
duration, full of rabid bigotry and coarse vituperation. As soon as he 
had sat down, Grattan arose. The house was breathless with expect- 
ancy. In Moore's " Life of Lord Byron" the latter gives an account of 
this scene, which he had no doubt heard from eye-witnesses. The 
noble poet tells us, that, for the first few minutes after Grattan had 
commenced speaking, the audience were in doubt whether to give or 
withhold their applause, so singular were his style and gestures, so 
unlike was he to any speaker they had previously listened to. All eyes 
were turned to Pitt to see the effect produced on him. At last, when 
they saw Ms stately head nodding in approval, they broke forth into 
rapturous cheers, and, when Grattan sat down, the triumph and enthu- 
siasm were unbounded. I think the reader will carry off a better idea 
of Grattan' s eloquence on this occasion, if I give a few passages in his 
own words, than if I attempt to give a meagre dry-bones of an outline 
or analysis of the entire argument. This is the speech in which Grattan 
says pathetically of independent Ireland, "I sat by her cradle, and fol- 
io wed her hearse :" 

"I rise" — thus Mr. Grattan commences — "to avoid the example of 
the member who has just sat down, and instead of calumniating either 
party, to defend both. . . . Thus has he pronounced against his country 
three curses : eternal war with one another, eternal war with England, 



188 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and eternal peace with France. So strongly does he inculcate this that 
if a Catholic printer were, in the time of invasion, to publish his speech, 
that printer might be indicted for treason, as the publisher of a compo- 
sition administering to the Catholics a stimulative to rise, and advancing 
the authority of their religion for rebellion. His speech consists of four 
parts: 1st, an invective uttered against the religion of the Catholics; 
2d, an invective uttered against the present generation ; 3d, an invective 
against the past; and 4th, an invective against the future. Here the 
limits of creation interposed, and stopped the member. It is to defend 
those different generations, and their religion, I rise ; to rescue the Cath- 
olic from his attack and the Protestant from his defence. . . . Thus 
when he thinks he is establishing his errors, unconsciously and uninten- 
tionally he promulgates truth; or rather, in the very tempest of his 
speech, Providence seems to govern his lips, so that they shall prove 
false to his purposes, and bear witness to his refutations. Interpret the 
gentleman literally — what blasphemy has he uttered ! He has said that 
the Catholic religion, abstracted as it is at present in Ireland from 
Popery, and reduced as it is to mere Catholicism, is so inconsistent with 
the duties of morality and allegiance as to be a very great evil. Now, 
that religion is the Christianity of two-thirds of all Christendom ; it fol- 
lows then, according to the learned doctor, that the Christian religion is 
in general a curse. He has added that his own countrymen are not only 
depraved by religion, but rendered perverse by nativity; that is to say, 
according to him, blasted by their Creator and damned by their Re- 
deemer. In order, therefore, to restore the member to the character of a 
Christian, we must renounce him as an advocate, and acknowledge that 
he has acquitted the Catholics whom he meant to condemn, and con- 
victed the laws which he meant to defend." 

After speaking of the past rebellions of Ireland, which, he asserts, 
were caused by proscription, confiscation, extermination, not by religion, 
Mr. Grattan proceeds: "If all the blood shed on those occasions, if the 
many fights in the first and the signal battles in the second period, and 
the consequences of those battles to the defeated and the triumphant — 
to the slave that fled and to the slave that followed — shall teach our 
country the wisdom of conciliation, I congratulate her on those deluges 
of blood ; if not, I submit, and lament her fate, and deplore her under- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 189 

standing, which would render not only the blessings of Providence, but 
its visitations, fruitless, and transmit what was the curse of our fathers 
as the inheritance of our children. 

" The learned gentleman proceeds to misstate a period of one hun- 
dred years. . . . 

" I leave the member, and proceed to discuss the differences now 
remaining that discriminate His Majesty's subjects of the Protestant 
and Catholic persuasion. Before we consider how far we differ, it is 
necessary to examine how far we agree. We acknowledge the same 
God, the same Eedeemer, the same consequences of redemption, the 
same Bible, the same Testament. Agreeing in this, we cannot, as far 
as respects religion, quarrel about the remainder ; because their merits 
as Christians must, in our opinion, outweigh their demerits as Catholics, 
and reduce our religious distinction to a difference about the eucharist, 
the mass and the Virgin Mary — matters which may form a difference of 
opinion, but not a division of interest. The infidel, under these circum- 
stances, would consider us as the same religionists. ... I am to add 
the mischief done to the morals of the country by setting up a false 
standard of merit, by which men, without religion, morals or integrity, 
shall obtain, by an abhorrence of their fellow-subjects, credit and conse- 
quence, and acquire an impunity for selling the whole community, be- 
cause they detest a part of it. You see it is impossible for any one part 
of society to afflict the other, without paying the penalty, and feeling 
the consequences of its own bad policy in the reaction of its own bad 
passions. I am to add the mischief done to the peace of the country 
among the lower orders, when the spirit of religious discord descends, 
and the holiday becomes a riot, and the petty magistrate turns chapman 
and dealer in politics, theologian and robber, makes for himself a situa- 
tion in the country by monstrous lies, fabricates false panics of insurrec- 
tions and invasion, then walks forth the little man of blood ; his cred- 
itors tremble; the French do not; and atrocities, which he durst not 
commit in his own name, he perpetrates for the honor of his king and 
in the name of his Maker. 

" I have heard of the uncivilization of Ireland ; too much has been 
said on that subject : I deny the fact ; . . . but if anything, however, 
delays the perfect and extensive civilization of Ireland, it is principally 



190 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

her religious animosity. Examine all the causes of human misery, the 
tragic machinery of the globe, and the instruments of civil rage and 
domestic murder, and you shall find no demon like it, because it privi- 
leges every other vice, and amalgamates with infidelity as well as with 
murder; and conscience, which restrains every other vice, becomes a 
prompter here. . . . 

"The Parliament of Ireland — of that assembly I have a parental 
recollection. I sate by her cradle, I followed her hearse. . . . That the 
Parliament of Ireland should have entertained prejudices, I am not 
astonished; but that you, that you, who have, as individuals and as 
conquerors, visited a great part of the globe, and have seen men in all 
their modifications, and Providence in all its ways; that you, now at 
this time of day, should throw up dikes against the pope and barriers 
against the Catholic, instead of uniting with that Catholic to throw up 
barriers against the French, this surprises; and, in addition to this, that 
you should have set up the pope in Italy to tremble at him in Ireland ; 
and further, that you should have professed to have placed yourself at 
the head of a Christian, not a Protestant, league, to defend the civil and 
religious liberty of Europe, and should deprive of their civil liberty one- 
rifth of yourselves, on account of their religion, this surprises me; and 
also that you should prefer to buy allies by subsidies, rather than fellow- 
subjects by privileges; and that you should now stand, drawn out, as it 
were, in battalion, sixteen millions against thirty-six millions, and should 
at the same time paralyze a tilth of your own numbers, by excluding 
them from some of the principal benefits of your constitution, at the 
very time you say all your numbers are inadequate unless inspired by 
those very privileges. . . . 

" Turn to the opposite principle, proscription and discord. It has 
made in Ireland not only war. hut even peace, calamitous. . . . You 
have seen in 1798 rebellion break out again, the enemy masking her 
expeditions in consequence of the state of Ireland, twenty millions lost, 
one farthing of which did not tell in empire, and blood barbarously, 
boyishly and most ingloriouslv expended. . . . Half Europe is in bat' 
talion against us, and we are damning one another on account of mys- 
teries, when we should form against the enemy and march." 

The saintly, or rather sanetimonious, Spencer Perceval, while he 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 191 

spoke in complimentary terms of "the blaze of Mr. Grattan's elo- 
quence," endeavored, as might be expected, to refute him in a narrow, 
bigoted speech. Mr. Alexander, "though not insensible to the powers 
of Mr. Grattan's eloquence," thought proper to attack him in such a 
ruffianly style as drew forth a general burst of indignation even in that 
House. Mr. Alexander then tried to explain away or wriggle out of his 
charges. His unseemly, bigoted harangue was interrupted by frequent 
importunate cries of "Question, question!" 

On the 14th the debate was renewed. Mr. William Smith, Mr. Lee, 
and Dr. Lawrence uttered liberal sentiments. Mr. George Ponsonby 
warmly defended the Catholics. He said that there never was a race 
of men in Europe who had preserved so much of what was good under 
so much oppression. "I know them well; and I know that whatever 
is good in them they owe to themselves ; whatever is bad in them they 
owe to you. Yes, sir, to your bad government." He added that Eng- 
lish rulers looked on Ireland "in the light of what is called a Sore" and 
"as a cast-off.' 1 ' 1 Mr. Windham supported the motion, as did also Sir 
John Newport, who refuted the ignorant and mendacious statements 
contained in the petition of the Dublin corporation, to the effect that 
the Catholics of Ireland were placed on a footing of political power not 
enjoyed by dissenters from the established religion in any other state of 
Europe. Sir John showed that the inhabitants of Hungary, like those 
of Ireland, were divided in religion, but that the Diet of 1791 had given 
the Hungarians full freedom of religious faith, worship and education. 
All Hungarians were made eligible to public offices and honors " with- 
out any respect to their religion." Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald supported the 
motion ; and solemnly declared that when he voted for the union it was 
in view of emancipation. The Hon. H. Augustus Dillon and Mr. John 
Latouche spoke warmly for the Catholics. Sir John Cox Hippesley, to 
meet the objections of those who hesitated to admit the Catholics to 
positions of power in the state, through apprehensions of the influence 
of papal supremacy over their minds, proposed that some state control 
over the bishops should be arranged. This gentleman was afterwards 
one of the most prominent champions of the proposal to give the king 
a veto on the appointment of Catholic bishops. Mr. C. H. Hutchinson 
supported the motion and vindicated the character of his traduced coun- 



192 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

try men. Mr. Hawthorne also said he would vote on the Catholic side. 
Sir William Scott, Mr. Foster, who uttered some sentiments rather sin- 
gular as coming from the mouth of so inveterate an anti-unionist, Colonel 
Archdall, Mr. Hiley Addington, Lord Sidmouth's brother, and Lord De 
Blaquiere were the advocates of intolerance. Mr. Shaw deprecated any 
idea hostile to his Catholic countrymen. He wished, indeed, that all 
civil distinctions should be done away with in his country. But, how- 
ever painful it might be to do so, he must oppose the motion, in obedience 
to the instructions of his constituents (the citizens of Dublin). One of 
the most remarkable speeches in the debate was that of Mr. Pitt: "He 
was favorably disposed to the general principle of the question; but he 
had never considered it as involving any claim of right. Eight was 
totally independent of circumstances ; expediency included the consid- 
eration of circumstances, and was wholly dependent upon them. Before 
the union those privileges could not have been granted to the Catholics 
with safety to the existing Protestant establishment in church and state. 
After that measure, he saw the matter in a different light; though cer- 
tainly no pledge was ever given to the Catholics that their claims should 
be -ranted. [But Pitt hud j>h<l<i<<l himself to make emancipation a min- 
isterial question.) In any ease there should, however, be new checks and 
guards; checks against the evil influence which the bigotry of the priests 
might prompt them to exercise over the lower orders. Such were his 
general views. But he staled them not as the result of any pledge; 
though he admitted they were the consequences of the general reasoning 
in favor of the union, and that a very natural expectation was enter- 
tained that emancipation would have been immediately brought forward 
after the union. At present he could not be a party to the agitation of 
a i Measure, to the success of which there was cm irresistible obstacle. The 
only effect of agitating it would be to excite hopes and expectations that 
were sure to terminate in disappointment." Taking up a new line of 
argument, he said : "They were anxious to conciliate the Catholics, but 
let them not, in so doing, irritate a much larger portion of their fellow- 
subjects, whose loyalty was undoubted. The prevailing opinion against 
the petition was strong and undoubted. He appealed to Mr. G rat tan. 
the splendor of whose eloquence he extolled, to answer what would be 
the result of agitating the question. The anticipation of such conse- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 193 

quences as followed the disappointment of those hopes, which Lord Fitz- 
william had encouraged in 1795, made him lament the agitation of the 
question at that moment. He should therefore act contrary to all sense 
of duty, if he countenanced that petition in any shape." 

Mr. Fox closed the debate with a vigorous reply. In his opening 
speech he had said, " It was surely too much to expect that the Cath- 
olics would always fight for a constitution in the benefits of which, they 
were assured, they never should participate equally with their fellow- 
subjects." He now replied triumphantly to the arguments of the bigots. 
He pointed out that the advocates of the Catholics might retort on the 
Church-of-England party. "Did not," asked Mr. Fox, "the book of 
Homilies absolutely condemn whatever took place at the time of the 
revolution of 1688? Did not Sacheverell, upon the authority of those 
Homilies, attack and stigmatize that great proceeding as impious, and 
utterly destructive of the Church of England ? Did not the University 
of Oxford pass a decree, in 1683, against limiting the government, de- 
scribing it as one of those things which lead to atheism ? To use a homely 
phrase, I would warn those not to throw stones whose eyes are made of 
glass." 

At half-past four in the morning, the House divided. Its intellect 
and principle were on the side of Fox and emancipation. But bigotry 
carried the day. The ayes were 124, the noes, 336; majority, 212. And 
so, for a time, vanished the hopes of the Catholics ! 

In the year 1806 the power of Pitt declined. His friend Dundas, 
Lord Melville, was disgraced in spite of all his efforts. Lord Sidmouth 
deserted him on this occasion, and intrigued, not unsuccessfully, to turn 
the royal mind against him. Mr. Foster tendered his resignation. Lord 
Hardwicke was resolved to tender his. A defeat, which Castlereagh suf- 
fered at this time in Downshire, was another mortification to the min- 
ister in his sinking fortunes. In the cabinet changes, Castlereagh had 
accepted the office of secretary of state for the colonies and war depart- 
ment. He had consequently to seek re-election. It will be remembered 
that he had dismissed the marquis of Downshire from his command in 
the union days. This had produced a strong feeling against him in the 
county where he now sought to be re-elected. Accordingly, the interest 
of the marquis of Downshire prevailed against the interest of the family 



194 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of Stewart. But the failure of all his grand coalitions against Napoleon 
was the severest blow to the minister. The imperial star triumphed. 
England was loudly crying out for peace. On the 20th of January, 1806, 
three days after the meeting of Parliament, William Pitt [the younger) 
died, it might be said, of the battle of Austerlitz, which tremendous vic- 
tory had struck clown the might of Austria and Russia on the 2d of the 
previous December. His dying words were, "Oh, my country!" He 
had before said, "We may close the map of Europe for half a century." 
He loved England to his last breath ; to Ireland he had always been a 
bitter foe. 

Lord Hawkesbury was named first lord of the treasury. He only 
held office long enough to give himself the lucrative place of lord warden 
of the Cinque Ports. After some days, the old pig-headed king, much 
against bis grain, consented to the formation of the Grenville-Fox 
administration. It was a sort of coalition ministry. It has been nick- 
named "the ministry of all the talents." Lord Grenville was first lord 
of the treasury; Mr. Fox, secretary for foreign affairs; the celebrated 
forensic orator, Erskine, a Scot of the noble house of Buchan, English 
chancellor; the duke of Bedford, viceroy of Ireland, with William Elliott 
as chief secretary, George Ponsonby as chancellor, Plunket as attorney- 
general and Bushc as solicitor-general. The Whig element seemed to 
preponderate. Although neither Grattan nor Curran received office (the 
latter, indeed, in about five months, was made master of the rolls, an 
office for which — his practice having been more in law than equity — he 
was unfitted, which he disliked, and which relegated him from the polit- 
ical sphere), the Irish people were credulous enough, at first; to indulge 
in hopes not merely of emancipation, but of speedy repeal of the union. 
Soon, however, the scales fell from their eyes. 

Yet the just and generous-hearted Fox, in all probability, meant well 
to Ireland, and, if he could have seen things as they existed there with 
his own eyes, would doubtless have striven hard to redress her wrongs. 
But his health was rapidly breaking down; he was engaged, during the 
few remaining months of his life, in anxious and diffieult negotiations 
for peace, which finally failed. Besides, the majority of his colleagues 
were far less inclined to make concessions to Ireland than he was. It 
is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the obstinate old king's 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 195 



bigoted liostility to Catholic claims. Still, amongst the earliest parlia- 
mentary proceedings, an incident occurred that seemed of favorable omen 
to Ireland. Mr. O'Hara, with patriotic spirit, objected to Lord Castle- 
reagh's vote for monumental honors to Marquis Cornwallis, on the ground 
of that viceroy's instrumentality in carrying the union, which measure 
he, Mr. O'Hara, hoped would now be, if not utterly rescinded, at least 
greatly modified and ameliorated. Though Fox concurred with the 
motion, he agreed with Mr. O'Hara in characterizing the union "as one 
of the most disgraceful transactions in which the government of any 
country had been involved." When called to account by Mr. Alexander, 
a few days later, for these words, " he adhered to every syllable he had 
uttered relative to the union. But when he had reprobated a thing 
done, he said nothing prospectively. However bad the measure, an 
attempt to repeal it, without the most urgent solicitation from the 
parties interested, should not be made." His reprobation of the ac- 
cursed act had already encouraged several of the Dublin corporations to 
prepare petitions for repeal. This was the first whisper of the demand 
for repeal. However, some of them resolved not just then to embarrass 
ministers with Irish national claims. Indeed, most of the ministers 
would have proved determined opponents to any proposal for repeal. 
The premier, Grenville, had been an active agent in carrying it, and was 
in no wise friendly to Ireland. Sidmouth was the decided enemy of the 
Catholics. Though to his own no small mortification, but to the great 
joy of the people, the bigoted Redesdale had been at once, even before 
the arrival of his successor, removed from the chancellorship, some of his 
friends and tools remained. Alexander Marsden, one of the worst crea- 
tures of British rule, remained in office. Major Sirr remained in the 
Castle yard. The Orange magistracy was not displaced. When Curran 
at length reluctantly became master of the rolls, all the efforts of the 
party malignity of the Ascendency faction, instigated by Saurin, and 
even Bushe, Bedford's solicitor-general, were directed to prevent the bar 
from presenting an address to his honor on his promotion. The wretched 
bigots hated him, perhaps, for his unrivalled abilities — certainly for his 
generous patriotism. Happily, on this occasion, the independence of the 
Irish bar triumphed. One hundred and forty-six barristers to thirty- 
four voted for the address to the most splendid ornament of the profes- 



196 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

sion. Curran was never reconciled to his office ; he had expected to be 
made chief-justice, if possible, and, if not, attorney-general. In his 
letter to Grattan on his appointment, he says : " When the party, with 
which I had acted so fairly, had, after so long a proscription, come at 
last to their natural place, I did not expect to have been stuck up into 
a window, a spectator of the procession." 

The expiration of the act for the suspension of the habeas corpus 
about this time, without any attempt having been made to renew it, 
gave universal satisfaction to all true Irishmen. All state-prisoners who 
could bear the expenses of habeas corpus, or who had been in jail for two 
or three years, were set free. The restoration to society of these suf- 
ferers called forth great feelings of sympathy. The efforts to procure the 
customary farewell addresses to the departing viceroy, Hardwicke, after 
his five years' rule, naturally failed. Out of universal Ireland, addresses 
came only from Dublin, the county Mayo and the loyal Crosmolina Cav- 
alry. On the 31st of March, 1806, he sailed from the Pigeon House 
fort, Dublin, pursued by execrations. 

The duke of Bedford, his successor, was well received; but while 
his replies to the loyal, milk-and-water addresses of the Catholics were 
courteous, they were also ambiguous. An address from the Catholics of 
Dublin, signed by Lords Fingal Southwell, Kenmare, Gormanstown, etc., 
was presented at the Cast le on the 29th of April, 1800. It abjectly talks 
of the Catholics being "bound to the fortunes of the empire, by a re- 
membrance of what is past and the hope of future benefits," and adds 
that they would, if emancipated, feel pride in "remunerating their bene- 
factors with the sacrifice of their lives." These, it says also, are "sen- 
timents in which all Irish Catholics can have but one voice." To this 
precious Irish servility he replies, in still more precious English cant, 
"In the high situation in which His Majesty has been graciously pleased 
to place me, it is my first wish, as it is my first duty, to secure to all 
classes and descriptions of His Majesty's subjects in this part of the 
United Kingdom the advantages of a mild and beneficent administration of 
the law." He winds up with an expression of confidence that the JJoman 
Catholics of Dublin will, by their loyalty and other good qualities, afford 
the strongest recommendation to a favorable consideration of their in- 
terests. It was not long before the papers of this liberal viceroy warned 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 197 

the rival Catholic leaders that their meetings were in danger of bring- 
ing them within the sweep of the Convention Act. It must be admitted, 
however, that the liberal portion of the ministry, even if they possessed 
the best inclinations in the world (a thing more or less doubtful), were 
deprived of the power of immediately redressing the Catholic grievances 
by their bigoted colleagues and the still more bigoted and obstinate king. 
Meanwhile, wretched jealousies prevailed in the Catholic councils. 
Mr. Ryan, a young merchant, a connection of Mr. Eandal McDonnell, 
another influential Catholic, had frequently given the use of his large 
house in Marlborough street, Dublin, to the Catholic meetings. He had 
opened up a correspondence with Mr. Fox, in which he had represented 
himself as the accredited agent of the Catholics, and had thereby tried 
to promote his own personal interest. It seemed as though he desired 
to arrogate to himself the leadership of the Catholic body. These un- 
warranted proceedings, when they came to light, and also some unau- 
thorized acts of his friend, Mr. McDonnell, excited no inconsiderable 
amount of discontent and bad blood, and helped to increase the dissen- 
sions and weakness of the ill-managed Catholic movement. It was no 
wonder, then, that the hopes excited in the minds of Catholics by the 
accession of the Whigs to office proved illusory. At this time they had 
not strength or organization to conquer. The true leader had not climbed 
into the saddle. Jealousies continued even long after O'Connell began 
to take a prominent part in their affairs. Fagan, speaking of this early 
period of the struggle, says: "There was an enormous amount of jeal- 
ousy existing among the leaders, and they were not willing to allow the 
genius of one man to outstep the limits suited to their tamer and less 
expanded intellects. There was an aristocratic feeling about them little 
in unison with the liberalizing tendency of O'Connell's mind." O'Con- 
nell himself gives the following description of the position in which the 
Catholic cause stood at this time: "The 'natural leaders,' 1 as they were 
called, of the Catholics, the Catholic aristocracy, were jealous at seeing 
the leadership, which they were incapable of managing, taken out of 
their hands by lawyers and merchants. Efforts were occasionally made 
to control what they were pleased to deem the vulgar violence of our 
exertions. In 1807 a certain aristocratic banker [Lord Ffrenchf) vis- 
ited the Catholic Board one day, and delivered himself of some advice 



198 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

that savored suspiciously of Castle influence. I remember that he 
accused the Catholic barristers of clamoring for emancipation merely in 
order to qualify themselves for office. I opposed him of course, and I 
had a stout ally in Peter Bodkin Hussey, who discarded all ceremony 
from his attack on the invader. Peter's speech was extremely charac 
teristic of his sagacity, his coarseness and his impudence. ' I undei - 
stand this gentleman,' said Peter, 'just as well as if I was inside his 
head. He has talked about Catholic barristers having personal objects 
to gain. I tell him there are Catholic bankers who have personal objects 
to gain. I won't mince the matter, and I boldly declare my conviction 
that his advice is dishonest. I tell him, moreover, that although I only 
chastise him verbally now in the hope that he may take himself quietly 
off and give us no further trouble, yet I ivould hesitate just as little to chas- 
tise him personally if he should come here again on a similar errand.' The 
intruder took the hint and decamped. Peter Bodkin Hussey," continued 
O'Connell, " was in general as rough-tongued a fellow as ever I met, saying 
ill-natured things of everybody and good-natured things of nobody. He 
piqued himself on his impertinence. It was not, however, a bad reply 
he made to another impertinent fellow who hailed him one day in the Four 
Courts, saying, ' Peter, I'll bet you a guinea that you are a more imper- 
tinent rascal than I am.' 'You'd win your guinea,' answered Peter. ' I 
am certainly the more impertinent. You are only impertinent to those 
who, you know, won't knock you down for it — but /am impertinent to 
everybody.' " 

At a meeting of the Catholics, held on the 17th of February, 1812, 
Lord Fingal being in the chair, Lord Ffrench endeavored to delay the 
Catholic petition — he implied that to forward the petition then would 
injure the empire. 

" What!" exclaimed O'Connell in reply, "is it an injury to the empire 
to tender it the service of rive millions of subjects? Can the total de- 
votion of their talents and their property, their persons and their blood, 
be termed an injury to the empire? . . . Expediency as tuell as right, 
present policy and eternal justice, require our emancipation. ... I tell 
them {the English nation) that our emancipation was delayed by our 
union with their legislature. Our Protestant countrymen, in our do- 
mestic parliament, would have long since conceded what remained to be 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONUELL. 199 

granted. The union, with rude violence, and amid the wreck of the 
country, swept away every opportunity of kindness and liberality on 
one hand — every occasion of gratitude and affection on the other. It 
was a small but wretched consolation that no Catholic sat in the parlia- 
ment that voted away the country. The union was a measure in its 
every consequence deeply deplorable. The devastation it had produced 
had been frequently foretold ; 

" ' Ne'er were prophetic sounds so full of woe !' " 

Lord Fingal "begged to suggest that the union had no connection 
with the subject before the meeting." 

Mr. O'Connell "would submit to the chair, but it was impossible for 
him to stand over the grave of his country without shedding a tear. 
However, the union had some connection with the subject. The English 
were aware that emancipation was promised if the union were carried ; 
but that was an argument he would not use. He never would consent 
to the sale of his country ; he despised the man who would accept any 
boon as its price." After alluding to the king's opposition, he said- 
"Away, then, with all the objections to the presenting a petition; there 
should be no delay. The man does not merit freedom who would hug 
his chains for a day." 

The generous and large-hearted Charles James Fox died on the 13th 
of September, 1806. Perhaps his death was hastened by the failure of 
his negotiations for peace with France. His ministry was not destined 
to survive him long. This was of little consequence to Ireland. Even 
during Fox's life it had done little for Ireland ; and now that he was 
gone, the hopes of the Catholics, if they survived, had no reasonable 
foundation. Chancellor Ponsonby had dissatisfied his friends by his 
exercise of patronage. "Under his rule, also, the Orange magistracy 
were still suffered to have sway. Catholics were not yet protected from 
Orange outrages; their grievances were not redressed. The persons 
sent to investigate the alleged crimes of Orangemen seem, in some 
instances, to have had recourse to the accused parties themselves for 
evidence. So, if we are to credit Mr. Plowden, Sergeant Moore acted in 
the case of the two sons of Mr. Verner, an Orange magistrate, who were 
accused of heading an Orange mob at the burning of the house of one 



200 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

O'JSTeill. Mr. "Wilson of Owna Lodge, a Protestant magistrate of the 
county Tyrone and a neighbor of O'Neill's, sought hard to procure justice 
in this affair. But he failed in all his efforts to have the case fairly 
investigated. The conduct of Sergeant Moore was even warmly praised 
by Mr. Ponsonby. Mr. Wilson also applied to have his commission of 
the peace for Tyrone extended to Armagh (he dwelt near the boundary 
separating the two counties), that he might protect the defenceless 
Catholics in his neighborhood ; but this application was refused. His 
Quixotic desire to redress Catholic grievances at length brought outrages 
to his own door. One fine night his range of offices, filled with hay, was 
burned down ; and, finally, his persistent championing of oppressed 
Catholics caused the government, who no doubt regarded him as a 
"bore," to deprive him of his commission of the peace for Tyrone. 

No measure was adopted by the Bedford administration to check the 
grinding extortions of the tithe-system. As far as the liberal government 
cared to interfere, the rectors and tithe-proctors could enjoy full swing. 
One rarely-cunning "dodge" of the pious and conscientious rectors may 
be read in Plowden or in a note of Mr. Mitchel's history. At this time 
a secret society, called " The Threshers" {i.e., of tithe-proctor's corn), 
arose in the formerly peaceful counties of Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and pails 
of Roscommon. They confined their outrages to the collectors of tithes 
and their underlings. They frankly alleged, as a reason for their con- 
duct, that nearly all the profits of their crops went into the pockets 
of the tithe-proctors. They sent letters, signed " Captain Thresher," to 
the growers of flax and oats, telling them, at their peril, not to pay any 
moneyed composition to their rectors and vicars, or their lessees and 
proctors. They might, indeed, leave their tithes in kind on the fields. 
In spite of the suggestions of some of the old task-drivers of the people, 
still retained in office, the government did not proclaim the troubled 
counties. The ordinary law, with the help of jury-packing, sufficed to 
deal with the poor threshers. Twelve were hung in Mayo alone. Others 
in Galway, Roscommon and Longford. This society had no political 
object whatever. 

This administration increased the Maynooth grant from eighl thou- 
sand to thirteen thousand pounds. They did so with a view to connect 
the Catholic Church with the state. Besides the Rev. Dr. "Walsh, who 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 201 

was at the head of the recently-united English, Irish and Scotch eccle- 
siastical establishments in France, was now inviting the students of St. 
Patrick's College, Lisbon, to France. The British government, having 
a sharp eye to British interests, had no desire that Irish ecclesiastical 
students should be induced to go to that country. They might there 
learn to make many invidious comparisons between the state of society 
in England and France, especially having regard to the question of tol- 
eration. The Roman Catholic prelates, trustees of Maynooth, expressed 
their disapprobation of this invitation in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Crotty, 
rector of the Irish college at Lisbon. 

But the official career of "all the talents" was rapidly drawing to a 
close. The ministry brought in a bill, entitled the "Catholic Officers' 
Bill," to enable Catholics to hold commissions in the army. An anom- 
alous state of things then existed with respect to Catholic officers. 
By the Irish relief bill of 1793, Catholics could hold commissions in 
Ireland. At that time it was said that a similar bill would be speedily 
passed by the English legislature ; but this had never been done, so that 
in 1807, and long after, a Catholic might lawfully hold a commission in 
the British army as long as his regiment was quartered in Ireland, but, 
the moment it was ordered to England, he became liable to severe pen- 
alties. The ministers, by this paltry concession, hoped to stop agitation 
for a time. Besides, Irish Catholics might be induced to enlist in num- 
bers if they saw a few Catholic officers over them. Hence, Lord 
Ho wick, who introduced the bill, argued that it "would afford a salu- 
tary check to the increasing superabundant population in Ireland.' 11 The 
bigots, however, thought it horrible that men, who believed in seven 
sacraments, should command British troops. The dukes of York and 
Cumberland, Lords Eldon and Hawkesbury, were in a rage. Oxford 
University and the Dublin Orange corporation petitioned against the bill. 
Dublin University (to its honor be it spoken) braved the threats of the 
bigoted duke of Cumberland that it would lose his favor if it refused 
to petition against the measure. Plunket, in his first speech in the 
English House of Commons, denounced the royal duke's outrageous and 
unconstitutional attempt "to disturb the peace of that university." Per- 
ceval advertised in the public papers that "the Church was in danger." 
Immediately the yell of '' JSTo Popery" arose over England. At first the 



202 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



half-idiotic old king made no objection to the bill, but when his decaying 
mind (at best not very sound) understood the nature of the measure,, 
when his two sons, just mentioned, and Lords Eldon and Hawkesbury, 
who had frequent access to him, made him look at it from their point 
of view, he showed an invincible repugnance to the measure and a tho- 
rough distrust of his ministers. He asked Lord Howick one day, "What 
was going on in the House of Commons?" On being told that the bill 
was to come on, he gave vent to his dislike. 

Next day, he graciously told the ministers that he must look out for 
new servants. The ministers subsequently proposed to drop the bill 
altogether. In the nervous state of irritation, to which he had been 
worked up by his bigoted sons and others, this was not enough to satisfy 
him. He monstrously required a pledge, " that they would never more 
bring forward any measure whatever respecting Papists." Though the 
ministers had no idea of emancipating the Catholics, then at all events, 
they could not go so far as to give a pledge contrary to their oath as 
privy counsellors — " faithfully and truly to declare their mind and opin- 
ion, according to their hearts and consciences, in all things to be moved, 
treated and debated in council." 

Accordingly they resigned. The famous "No Popery" cabinet suc- 
ceeded them. The duke of Portland became first lord of the treasury, 
pious Perceval, chancellerof the exchequer, Castlereagh, secretary for the 
colonies and war department, George Canning, secretary for foreign af- 
fairs (melancholy to find a man so brilliant and generous in his aspira- 
tions in such e\ il company) ; Camden was president of the privy council, 
Eldon. chancellor of England. The duke of Richmond became viceroy of 
Ireland, with Lord Manners as Irish chancellor, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, 
already distinguished tor his Asiatic campaigns, and destined to win far 
greater renown in Europe and to see the imperial star of Napoleon pale 
before him, as Irish secretary. 

Grreat indignation was felt by numbers of members of both Houses 
of Parliament at the arbitrary dismissal of the Gren\ die ministry. Ef- 
forts were made against the principle of the required pledge. But all in 
vain. The king and his "No Popery" friends prevailed. Mr. Tighe, 
an Irish member, thought the tranquillity of Ireland would be effected 
by the removal of the duke of Bedford. He said few recruits were got 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 203 

for the army in Ireland, because the free exercise of the religion of the 
Catholic soldiers was interfered with. He also said, that " since the 
union, Ireland had felt no community of rights, no community of com 
merce, the only community it felt was that of having one hundred as- 
sessors in the British Parliament, who were to give ineffectual votes for 
the interest of their country, as he might do that night." Sir John New- 
port, also an Irish member, said: "Ireland would force itself upon the 
consideration of the House and of the empire. ... it was in vain to trifle 
with the pledges given." He added that "the noble duke at the head 
of the present government had given a still stronger pledge. He had 
written two letters to two officers of the Irish brigade, inviting them to 
enter into the service of this country, on the promise of making the Irish 
Act of 1793 general, and farther, of opening the whole military career to 
them !" 

The ministerial changes caused great commotion and dismay among 
the Catholics of Ireland. On the 18th of April, 1807, a Catholic 
meeting took place at the Exhibition Eoom, William street. Lord Fin- 
gal was in the chair. The debate was as to the propriety of forward- 
ing the petition for presentation. The difference of opinion on this 
subject was considerable. Grattan, acting on the advice of friends of 
their cause in London, particularly Sheridan, had recommended the com- 
mittee to withhold it. Keogh proposed that, from respect to the min- 
istry (for, in spite of their shortcomings, he praised them) and in def- 
erence to the advice of Mr. Grattan and other friends, the presentation 
of their petition for emancipation should be postponed. Mr. 0' Gorman 
opposed Mr. Keogh' s motion. But Mr. O'Connell gave it his powerful 
support. He spoke of the veteran Catholic leader, John Keogh, and 
his services to their cause, in terms of almost filial veneration. He said 
he would call him "the venerable father of the Catholic cause; for he 
was the oldest, as well as the most useful, of her champions ; he had 
exhausted his youth in the service of the Catholics, and his old age was 
still vigorous in the constitutional pursuit of emancipation." Sustained 
by the vigorous advocacy of O'Connell, Mr. Keogh's resolution to post- 
pone carried the day; the committee was dissolved, after Lord Fingal 
had been deputed to present a respectful address to the duke of Bedford, 
prior to his departure from Dublin. It is not very easy to see what 



204 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

legitimate claims this viceroy had to entitle him to such a compliment 
from the Catholic body; still less is it easy to enter into the feelings of 
the Dublin populace, on the day of the viceroy's embarkation for Eng- 
land, some of whom, carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, took out 
the horses from the viceregal carriages, and, yoking themselves in their 
place, drew the duke and duchess to the water's edge. The viceroy, so 
far from having done anything for their cause to merit this exaggerated 
manifestation of popular regret and gratitude, had, in reality, during 
the whole course of his administration, endeavored to keep back the 
Catholic claims.* 

* The chief books from which I have drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter are, " The 
History of Ireland, from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October, 1810." by 
Francis Plowden, Esq.; Mitchel's "Continuation of MacGeoghegan ;" "Life and Times of Daniel 
O'Connell," Dublin, J. Mullany, 1 Parliament street; Fagau's "Life of O'Connell;" Dauyt's 
"Personal Recollections " of O'Connell ; Wise's " History of the Catholic Association;" "History 
of Europe," by Sir A. Alison, Bart.; Moore's "Life of Byron;" "Grattan's Speeches;" Davis'i 
"* Memoir of Curran ;" " Curran's Life," by his son, etc. 




DEAN SWIFT. 



i 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The "No-Popery Ministry" show their teeth — Jack Giffard, "the dog in office" — 
Grattan's invective against Giffard — Insurrection and Arms acts — Noble conduct 
of Richard Brinsley Sheridan — The bishop of Quimper's pastoral--Furious intol 
erance — The " Shanavests " and " Caravats " — Liberal Protestants — Divisions of 
the Catholic Committee; O'Connell's views prevail. 

The Catholic petition, which had been rejected by the House of Com- 
mons on account of the informality of the signatures, was now sent back 
from Ireland, properly signed, and presented to the House on the 25th 
of May, 1808, by Henry Grattan. He showed the absurd inconsistency 
of the English government in having conceded to the Catholics the right 
to vote for members of Parliament and to hold all military and civil 
offices, except about fifty situations and seats in either house of Parlia- 
ment, and to exclude them from those seats in Parliament on the ground 
that they were perjurers on principle and did not respect the obligations 
of oaths; .... "that is to say, that those persons so admitted by the 
law into the constitution, forming a part of your army and navy, are 
destitute of the principles which hold together the social order, and 
which form the foundation of government, and that they are thus 
depraved by their religion." 

But the important part of Mr. Grattan's speech, which it is abso- 
lutely necessary to introduce into this biography, from its influence in 
bringing about events in which our hero took the most conspicuous part, 
is the following passage: "And here I have a proposition to make — a 
proposition which the Catholics have authorized me to make; it is this : 
that in the future nomination of bishops His Majesty may interfere and 
exercise his royal privilege, and that no Catholic bishop be appointed 
without the entire approbation of His Majesty. In France the king used 
to name ; in Canada the king names ; it is by no means incompatible 
with the Catholic religion that our king should name ; and I do not see 
any great difficulty on this head." 

This is the origin of the celebrated question of the veto, which occa- 
sioned so many debates in the Catholic Committee, so much controversy 
in writing as well as in speech, and so much dissension and bad blood in 
the Catholic body for a number of years. Lord Fingal had remained in 



206 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

London after the first rejection of the petition. He had got into com- 
munication with some friends of the Catholics, especially Mr. Ponsonby. 
Anxious to hasten the emancipation of the Catholics, he had let himself 
be deluded into the belief that, if the Catholics would submit to a royal 
veto on the appointment of their bishops, the success of the Catholic 
cause Avould be greatly facilitated. Fortified in this conviction by the 
advice of Dr. Miiner, the learned controversialist, who was an English 
vicar-apostolic, and also a sort of agent in England for the Irish Catholic 
bishops, Lord Fingal, in conjunction with this English prelate, ventured 
to authorize Messrs. Grattan and Ponsonby to offer, on the part of the 
Catholics, the right of the veto to the Crown. Lord Fingal had indeed 
got powers from the Catholics of Ireland to manage their petition, but 
they had never for a moment imagined that he would make such an 
offer as this of the veto. 

For the present, in spite of the offer, the bigotry of Perceval and his 
majorities caused the rejection of the petition. 

It appears that in 1799 ten of the Irish bishops, constituting the 
board of Maynooth College, allowed themselves to be deluded by Pitt 
and Castlereagh to agree, "That in the appointment of Roman Catholic 
prelates to vacant sees within the kingdom, such interference of govern- 
ment as may enable it to be satisfied of the loyalty of the person ap- 
pointed is just, and ought to be agreed to." This statement was accom- 
panied with an admission, -That a provision through government for the 
Roman Catholic clergy of this kingdom, competent and seemed, ought 
to be thankfully accepted." This transaction never came fully to light 
till 1810. The reverend Father Brenan, in his "Ecclesiastical History," 
seems to think it natural that the prelates should try to conceal this 
transaction, especially when they found themselves "swindled," by Mr. 
Pitt and the other British statesmen, "out of the stipulated price of their 
seduction" to the support of the accursed measure of the anion. 

Leaving this negotiation of 1799 and returning to the year 1808, 
the Irish Catholics were tilled with indignation at the prospect of the 
British government's being able to extend its corrupting influence over 
their "virtuous hierarchy." Clergy and people were determined to 
maintain their Church's independence of the State. The Irish Catholic 
prelates, warned and alarmed by the roar of popular indignation, met 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 207 



in regular national synod on the 14th and 15th of September, 1808, in 
Dublin, and passed the following resolutions : " It is the decided opinion 
of the Roman Catholic prelates of Ireland, that it is inexpedient to 
introduce any alteration in the canonical mode hitherto observed in the 
nomination of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops, which mode long 
experience has proved to be unexceptionable, wise and salutary. 

" That the Roman Catholic prelates pledge themselves to adhere to 
the rules by which they have been hitherto uniformly guided — namely, 
to recommend to His Holiness only such persons as are of unimpeach- 
able loyalty and peaceable conduct." These synodical resolutions bore 
the signatures of twenty-three prelates. Three dissented; they had 
signed the resolutions of 1799. 

Meetings were held all through the island to protest against the 
veto scheme. The bishops were thanked for their resolutions. The 
people were resolved rather to remain without emancipation than suffer 
the British government to acquire any control over their Church. The 
press swarmed with pamphlets. Of all this opposition to the veto 
O'Connell was from first to last the commanding spirit. Dr. Milner, 
after the use of his name in Parliament, published a statement, that he 
had no authority to sanction any such arrangement as would confer the 
power of the veto on the king, and complaining that he had been mis- 
quoted. After the Irish bishops had published their resolutions, this 
eminent prelate became one of the most vehement and uncompromising 
opponents of the veto. "We shall see instances of his opposition before 
this biography reaches its conclusion. 

I shall here, for the sake of a little variety, give a comical explana- 
tion of the meaning of the veto, which was given by a friar in 1813. 
The poor friar was announcing a meeting on the vexed question of this 
terrible veto. The story is one of O'Connell's. 

" ' Now, ma bouglialij said the friar, ' you haven't got gumption, and 
should therefore be guided by them that have. This meeting is all 
about the veto, d'ye see. And now, as none of ye know what the veto is, 
I'll just make it all as clear as a whistle to yez. The veto, you see, is a 
Latin word, ma boughali, and none of yez understands Latin. But / will 
let you know all the ins and outs of it, boys, if you'll only just listen to 
me now. The veto is a thing that — you see, boys, the veto is a thing 



208 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

that — that the meeting on Monday is to be held about.' (Here there 
were cheers and cries of 'hear! hear!') 'The veto is a thing that — in 
short, boys, it's a thing that has puzzled wiser people than any of yez ! 
In short, boys, as none of yez are able to comprehend the veto, I needn't 
take up any more of your time about it now; but I'll give you this 
piece of advice, boys : just go to the meeting and listen to Counsellor 
O'Connell, and just do whatever he bids yez, boys!' " 

Wyse, speaking of Lord Fingal's conference with Mr. Ponsonby and 
other supporters of the Catholic cause, says: "These conferences after- 
ward proved of the most injurious consequence to the Catholic commu- 
nity. Whether from inadvertence or zeal or injudicious submission to 
the opinions of parliamentary advisers, Lord Fingal appears precipi- 
tately to have consented to the proposition of a measure for which cer- 
tainly he had no adequate or specific authority from the body itself." 
Most of the Catholic aristocracy took the side of Lord Fingal in this 
transaction; thus the misunderstanding between the aristocratic and 
popular sections of the Catholic body increased daily, and their cause 
was consequently weakened for the time. 

I shall here give, without any comment, a curious passage from a 
letter of the then Irish secretary, Sir Arthur Wellesley, written to Lord 
Hawkesbury on the 4th of February, 1808, shortly before this affair of 
the veto. Sir Arthur writes : " I understand that the English Catholics 
have lately made some endeavors to unite their cause with the Irish of 
the same persuasion. The Irish appear to hope to derive some advan- 
tage from this union of interests, of which it can only be said that, if it 
should be made, it will inoculate them with more reUgwrb, and may have 
the effect of moderating their party violence, and, at all events, it will 
give us an additional channel for hnoioing their secrets." As the English 
Catholics were far more willing to accord the veto than the Irish, and as, 
moreover, they were, generally speaking, little favorable to democratic 
principles, it is more than probable that Lord Fingal's readiness to con- 
cede to the Crown the right of interference with episcopal appointments 
was mainly brought about by the influence of their views. In fact, we 
have seen that he took the advice of Dr. Milner, an English bishop, 
before he committed himself. 

Sir Arthur Wellesley did not remain much longer in his post of chief 



THE LIFE OF DASFIEL O'CONNELL. 209 

secretary of Ireland. In this year, 1808, he commenced that career of 
victory in Spain which gradually conducted him to the height of military 
renown. In his Irish administration he neither won, nor deserved to 
win, any share of the gratitude of his countrymen. He made himself a 
willing instrument of oppression, not, perhaps, of altogether as ruthless 
a nature as that which prevailed under the rule of some of his prede- 
cessors, but, at the same time, unnecessarily harsh and unjust. But 
what is most surprising of all — considering that he has contrived to get 
the reputation (and, in some respects, at least, it is not wholly unmer- 
ited) of being a man with a strong sense of duty, of being a man also 
straightforward and honest — is to see the aptitude, and even inclination, 
which he showed, while Irish secretary, for doing the dirty work of cor- 
ruption. He engages con amove in the task of purchasing the foul ser- 
vices of spies and informers, superintending and directing himself the 
necessary negotiations. He also seems to have undertaken the chief 
management of the corrupt traffic in parliamentary votes and seats and 
influence. He coolly calls this sort of thing "turning the moral weak- 
ness of individuals to good account" — u good account" meaning simply 
the triumph of his party's schemes, good, bad or indifferent. 

Here is one of his precious letters on the subject of corrupting the 
press. It is addressed to Sir Charles Saxton. Bart., and is dated 10th 
April, 1809 : "I am one of those who think that it will be very dan- 
gerous to allow the press in Ireland to take care of itself, particularly as 
it has been so long in leading-strings. I would, therefore, recommend 
that in proportion as you diminish the profits of the better kinds of 
newspapers, such as the Correspondent and the Freeman' 's Journal, and 
some others of that class, on account of proclamations, you should 
increase the sum they are allowed to charge on account of advertise- 
ments and other publications. It is absolutely necessary, however, to 
keep the charge within the sum of ten thousand pounds per annum. 11 
The great warrior, even amid all the anxieties and preoccupations of his 
Portuguese and Spanish campaigns, could keep his attention alive to, and 
one eye fixed on, the congenial business of corrupting t'he Irish press. 

On the 12th of January, in the same year, that secret agent in dirty 
affairs of state, to whom I have already slightly referred in a former 
chapter, J. Pollock of Navan, writes thus to Sir Arthur : "If you have 



210 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

Walter Cox, who keeps a small book-shop in Anglesea street, he can let 
you into the whole object of sending this book" ("Pieces of Irish His- 
tory," by William James McNevin, New York) "to Ireland at this time; 
and further, if you have not Cox, believe me, no sum of money, at all 
within reason, would be amiss in riveting him to government. I have 
spoken of this man before to Sir Edward Littlehales and to Sir Charles 
Saxton. He is the most able, and, if not secured, by far the most for- 
midable, man that I know of in Ireland. The talk we have had about 
Catholic emancipation is wholly, with the great body of the Catholics, a 
cloak to cover their real object. Their real objects are political power, 
the Church estates, and the Protestant property in Ireland." 

O'Connell had but a poor opinion of the celebrated " Iron Duke." 
The duke was certainly an indifferent enough character, if we regard 
him only in the light of an Irishman. Indeed, we may call him a deci- 
dedly bad Irishman. But. viewing him from other points of view, he 
appears to greater advantage; bo that, upon the whole, I am inclined 
to think O'Connell unjust in holding such a disparaging estimate of 
Wellington as, judging from his words on various occasions, he did. 

"I have two faults t<> find with him," says O'Connell. "One is, that 
I never yet heard of his promoting any person in the army from mere 
merit, unless backed by some interest. The second fault is, that the 
duke has declared that the only misfortune of his life is his being an 
Irishman. There is a meanness, a paltriness, in this, incompatible with 
greatness of soul. But abstractedly from sentiment he may be right 
enough; for, great as his popularity and power have been in England, 
I have no doubt they would have been infinitely greater if he had been 
an Englishman. John Bull's adoration would have been even more 
intense and devoted if the idol had not been a Paddy." 

O'Connell had in his possession the original of a curious letter, 
written by the marquis of WeUesley, the famous duke's almost equally 
famous eldest brother, to a ZSI r. Mockler of Trim. It is a reply to an 
application made by that gentleman to the writer (then only* earl of 
Mornington) to procure a commission in the army for his son. The sub- 
sequently all-powerful statesman — at one time viceroy of India, now 
minister of foreign affairs, anon lord-lieutenant of Ireland — apologizes 
to Mr. Mockler for his utter inability to help him In the object of his 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 211 

desire. His excuse is, that "commissions are so hard to be got, that 

Ms brother Arthurs name" (the name of the future victor of Waterloo, 

prince, duke, peer of Great Britain, marshal in I forget how many services) 

•had been two years upon the list, and he had not yet got an appointment." 

If Arthur had failed to get this commission, how many events in 
European history, but especially in English and Irish history, would 
have turned out quite differently ! 

But to return to the question of the veto. It may not be out of place 
to quote some remarks of the illustrious Edmund Burke which have a 
direct bearing on the subject and are replete with that great statesman's 
usual profound political wisdom. In his Letter to a Peer he says : " Never 
were the members of one religious sect fit to appoint pastors to another. 
Those who have no regard for their welfare, reputation or internal quiet 
will not appoint such as are proper. The seraglio of Constantinople is 
as equitable as we are, whether Catholics or Protestants, and, where 
their own sect is concerned, fully as religious ; but the sport which they 
make of the miserable dignities of the Greek Church, the factions of the 
harem to which they make them subservient, the continual sale to which 
they expose and re-expose the same dignity, and by which they squeeze 
all the inferior orders of the clergy, is nearly equal to all the other 
oppressions together exercised by Mussulmans over the unhappy mem- 
bers of the Oriental Church. It is a great deal to suppose that the 
present Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman Church of Ireland 
with a religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps 
dare not, do it." Again, in a letter to Dr. Hussey, the Catholic bishop 
of Waterford, he says: "If you (the Catholic bishops) have not Avisdom 
enough to make common cause, they will cut you off one by one. I am 
sure that the constant meddling of your bishops and clergy with the 
Castle, and the Castle with them, will infallibly set them ill with their own 
body. All the weight which the clergy have hitherto had to keep the 
people quiet will be wholly lost if this once should happen. At best 
you will have a marked schism, and more than one kind, and I am 
greatly mistaken if this is not intended and diligently and systematically 
pursued." 

Some individuals of the extreme National party of Ireland have 
sometimes wished that the English government would get hold of the 



212 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 



Catholic clergy and make them a salaried body. They argue that the 
clergy would, in that case, lose all political influence whatsoever, and 
they would no longer be in a position to throw obstacles in the way of 
the patriots who struggle to put an end to British connection. But a 
fallacy pervades all these speculations. It is not quite certain that the 
clergy would, in the supposed case, lose their political influence; and if 
they did not, under such circumstances it would be exercised in a way 
more ruinous to the designs of Irish nationalists than ever. As things 
actually stand, if the Irish people were truly in earnest and went the 
right way to work for independence, they would encounter little opposi- 
tion from the clergy — in fact, they would be sure to carry them along 
with them. One probable cause of the lukewarmness of the clergy to 
our national struggles is their scepticism as to the sincerity and devotion 
of the leaders and followers engaged therein. In speaking of the pos- 
sible good or evil, that might result from the state-payment of the Cath- 
olic clergy of Ireland, I have omitted the consideration of the injury, 
that might result to the religion and morality as well of the people as 
of the clergy themselves. 

At the close of the parliamentary session of 1S08, Lord Grenville 
made a motion that Catholic merchants should be made eligible to the 
posts of governor or directors of the Bank of Ireland. Against this 
proposal a perfect howl of bigotry arose in the enlightened British legis- 
lature. Lord Westmoreland said, "that no further concessions whatever 
should, under present circumstances, be granted to the Catholics.'' He 
also gave Lord Grenville and the Whigs a smart rap. Lie said, "He 
was surprised to see such motions so often brought forward by those 
who, when they were themselves in power, employed every exertion to 
deprecate and prevent such discussions." Whigs out of place are the 
champions of Irish grievances; in office they almost invariably become 
what O'Connell styled them, "the base, bloody and brutal Whigs." 
The bigoted Redesdale, ex-Irish chancellor, fell into a state of panic at 
the clanger which would inevitably menace the Protestant interest, if such 
a monstrous innovation took place as to allow Papists to become bank 
directors. He said, "The more you were ready to grant them, the more 
power and pretensions you gave to the Catholics to come forward with 
fresh claims, and perhaps to insist upon them." This sage counsellor 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 213 

then proceeded to abuse the Catholics in general and their priests in 
particular. 

But if the brutal insolence and bigotry of the Tories refused to the 
Catholics even so paltry a concession as that proposed by Lord Grenville, 
they had no hesitation about giving Dublin a new police bill. This bill, 
along with its other merits, gave scope for a little jobbing, as it created 
eighteen new places for police magistrates. The session of Parliament 
terminated on the 8th of July, 1808, having done no good for Ireland, 
but, on the contrary, having perpetrated against her a more than average 
amount of British oppression. 

Meanwhile the veto question still excited the general mind of Ireland 
and set her patriots by the ears. In the words of Mr. Mitchel, " These 
debates at once raised an immense controversy, both in England and in 
Ireland, which lasted many years, and produced innumerable books and 
pamphlets, discussing the limits between spiritual and temporal power, 
the meaning of loyalty and of the oath of supremacy, and "the liberties 
of the Gallican Church!" 

In the midst of all this turmoil, our hero grew daily both in power 
and in fame. In the next chapter we shall see him at length the recog- 
nized leader of his countrymen. His policy was not, like that of the 
aristocratic section of the Catholics, one of delay and of withholding 
petitions. On the contrary, it was aggressive, it was a policy of imme- 
diate and untiring effort and action. In a word, O'Connell's continual 
cry, from this time forward, was, "Agitate, agitate, agitate!"* 

* The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : " The His- 
tory of Ireland from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October 1810," by Francis 
Plowden, Esq. ; Wyse's "History of the Catholic Association;" Mitchel's "Continuation of McGe- 
oghegan ;" Father Brenan's " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland ;" " Wellington Correspondence ;" 
" Grattan's Speeches ;" " Works of Edmund Burke;" Barrington's "Personal Sketches;" "Select 
Speeches of Daniel O'Connell," by his son John; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" O'Neill Daunt's 
'Personal Recollections;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 
Parliament street, etc. etc. etc 



CHAPTER IX. 

Orange mukders and massacres — Fight between the Kings county militia and the 
Orange yeomanry — The "No-Popery" government connive at the Orange atroci- 
ties — Insurrection acts — Assemblage of Orange delegates in 180S — Disingenuous- 

NESS OF THE LEADING ORANGEMEN — O'CONNELL ON THE ORANGEMEN — GOVERNMENT PAR- 
TIALITY — Double-dealing and hypocrisy of the duke of Richmond — His tour 

THROUGH MUNSTER — He OFFENDS THE BaNDON ORANGE LEGION BY HIS MOCK CONCILIA- 
TION of Catholics — Viceregal smooth talk and Catholic gullibility — Religious 

PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN THE ARMY — O'CONNELL SPEAKS AGAINST TITHES IN HIS 
NATIVE COUNTY — REORGANIZATION OF THE CATHOLIC COMMITTEE IN 1809 — O'CoNNELL's 
FORESIGHT — THE VETO QUESTION AGITATED AGAIN — THE CATHOLIC PETITION REJECTED BY 

Parliament — Chlef-Baron Woulfe — His elaborate oration on the veto demol- 
ished by O'Connell; O'Connell's humorous application of an old fable — Repeal 
motion in the Protestant Corporation of Dublin in 1S10 — The Catholics join in 

THE DEMAND FOR REPEAL — GREAT MEETING IN THE EXCHANGE — O'CoNNELL's POWER- 
FUL SPEECH IN FAVOR OF REPEAL — JOHN KeOGH RETIRES FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF THE 

Catholic body, and Daniel O'Connell succeeds him — New programme — O'Connell 
on his own frequent repetitions — hopeless insanity of george the third — the 
Prince of Wales becomes prince-regent — Great hopes of emancipation — Bitter 
disappointment of the catholics; the regent breaks his pledges — lady hert- 
FORD'S EVIL INFLUENCE — WELLESLEY Pole's CIRCULAR — STATE PROSECUTIOM OF Dr. 

Sheridan— Spirited conduct of the Catholic Committee — Meeting in Fishamblr 
street Theatre. 

[HILE the Catholic Committee, during the years between 1803 
and 1809, were thus endeavoring, with more or less energy, to 
awaken public feeling and sympathy in behalf of their cause, 
a holding meetings in Dublin on every occasion thai seemed to 
tgjg give them an opportunity of urging their claims — meetings at Mr. 
Kyan's house in Marlborough street, at Mr. McDonnell's house in Allen 
court, at the Coffee-House in Earl street, at the Repository in Stephen's 
Green, at the Exhibition room in "William street, at the Cock Tavern, 
Henry street, at the Star and Garter, Essex street, at the Rotunda and 
elsewhere — the hostile spirit of the Ascendency faction, and especially 
of the Orangemen, remained as inveterate as ever. During the admin- 
istration of the duke of Richmond several outrages of the most lawless 
description were perpetrated by the Orangemen against the Catholics. 




THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 215 

At Corinshiga, a mile and a half from the town of Newry, on the evening 
of the 23d of June, 1808, a number of men, women and children were 
amusing themselves at a bonfire. Some danced around a garlanded 
pole. Others looked on and chatted. "While they were thus enjoying 
themselves, free from all anxiety, eighteen armed yeomen suddenly drew 
near. Their sergeant deliberately ordered them to "present and fire," 
which they did repeatedly, killing one of the crowd named McKeown, 
and wounding several. Little as the magistrates of Newry loved the 
Catholics, such a heartrending occurrence shocked them. They offered 
a reward for the miscreants who had perpetrated this ruthless deed, and 
also wrote to the viceroy, begging that he would take some steps to pro- 
tect the unarmed Catholics against the Orange brigands, the lowest of 
whom were allowed to possess arms. The duke's reply civilly expressed 
regret at the sad occurrence, but weeks passed over, and still nothing 
was done by government to vindicate outraged justice and humanity. 
One of the ruffian yeomanry concerned in the butchery was, indeed, 
apprehended, through the exertions of the local authorities, but he was 
guarded with so little vigilance that he speedily managed to escape. So 
secure of impunity did the Orangemen feel, that a party of the same corps, 
to which the assassins belonged, took occasion one day, when returning 
from parade, to fire a volley, in a spirit of bravado, over the house of the 
murdered person's father. The report of the volley threw his hapless 
wife into convulsions. 

The Catholic inhabitants in the neighborhood being in a state of 
terror for their lives, Mr. Waring, one of the magistrates, sent copies of 
the depositions of some of them to the Castle, and earnestly entreated 
government to issue a proclamation offering a reward for the apprehen- 
sion of the murderers. Mr. Secretary Traill replied that the government 
declined to take any steps in the matter. On the 3d of August, Mr. 
Waring remonstrated with the government for their strange inaction, 
and maintained that even yet they might do some good by a proclama- 
tion, if it were only in showing their strong disapproval of such outrages. 
This remonstrance was not even honored by a reply. Even the adver- 
tisement, sent by the local magistrates to the Hue and Cry, was not 
inserted in that police sheet. In short, the whole matter ended, and not 
one of the nineteen criminals was ever brought to justice. Is it any 



216 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

marvel that, in many parts of Ulster, the Catholics have been wont, 
when the Orange anniversaries of the 1st and 12th of July would come 
around, either to barricade their dwellings and quench the lights or else 
to make defensive preparations for a nocturnal combat? 

A somewhat similar deed of horror occurred even in the capital, not 
very far from the Castle itself. Some sportive boys dressed up a foun- 
tain in Kevin street with green boughs and flowers. They also kin- 
dled a bonfire. A few Orange fanatics took offence at this display of 
thoughtless gaiety. They hastily procured loaded guns and fired upon 
the mirthful groups around the festooned fountain and the bonfire. 
Wild shrieks instantaneously arose. The panic-stricken groups scat- 
tered in haste, but not before one victim was killed outright and several 
others were grievously wounded. 

On the 12th of August, 1808, a party of fifty Kings county militia- 
men, who had volunteered into the line, marched without arms from 
Strabane to Omagh, in the county Tyrone. Three hundred Orange 
yeomen were already there celebrating the anniversary of the battle of 
Aughrim. One of these knocked off the cap of one of the militiamen 
because it was bound with green. This, indeed, was the regimental 
color; but then it was also the Croppy color, and consequently offensive 
to the loyalty of the "true blue." The militiaman had the spirit to 
strike the insulting ruffian. A general row ensued. The unarmed 
Kings county men retreated to the barrack before the onslaught of the 
three hundred armed yeomen. There procuring arms, they defended 
themselves successfully, and killed four of their lawless assailants. 
Thomas Hogan, a corporal of the Kings county men, was tried for the 
murder of the brigands, and, incredible as it may appear, was found 
guilty of manslaughter! Such was the justice accorded to Catholics 
in those times ! 

At Mountrath, in July of the same year, the Orangemen murdered 
the Rev. Mr. Duane, the parish priest. The year following they mur- 
dered a man named Kavanagh in his own house, beating his brains oul 
in the presence of his wife and four children. On the first day of this 
same July, at Balieborough, in the county Cavan, the Orangemen vio- 
lently attacked the dwelling of the parish priest, fired several shots at 
him and left him for dead. Not contented with this, they also wrecked 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 217 

the chapel and wounded and insulted every Catholic they encountered 
that day. 

These atrocities, both at Mountrath and Balieborough, so far from 
having ever brought down just punishment on those guilty of them, 
seem to have hardly called forth the slightest inquiry. 

In truth, the government, in those days, might be said to give direct 
encouragement to the Orange banditti. Catholics, too, were excluded 
from positions to which the law now entitled them — from grand -juror- 
ships, for example. If a high-sheriff showed himself at all favorable to 
them, he was excluded from the next list. Sir Arthur Wellesley, if 
during his secretaryship he was not exactly a party to the Orange atro- 
cities, at least did little or nothing to repress them, and he was uniformly 
rigorous in carrying out measures against the Catholics. Of course, the 
peasantry were occasionally roused by their wrongs so as to lose all 
patience. A bailiff, an exterminating agent or an extortionate tithe- 
proctor might sometimes fall a victim to the vengeance of an oppressed 
and maddened people. Instead of dealing with these crimes under the 
ordinary forms of law, the government would carry through Parliament 
unconstitutional acts, that might, indeed, be justified if a country were 
actually in a state of insurrection, but in no state of things short of this. 
If the suspension of the habeas corpus act were not renewed, an Insur- 
rection Act did the work of tyranny quite as well. In fact, however 
the names may vary, Ireland almost invariably has coercion acts under 
one form or another. 

There is reason to believe that in September, 1808, when the Catholic 
bishops of Ireland assembled in a national synod to oppose the veto, the 
delegates of the Orange societies met in Dawson street, Dublin, to coun- 
teract their resolutions. The incurable bigots, J. C. Beresford, James 
Verner, Patrick Duigenan and delegates from seventy-two English lodges 
(chiefly Lancastrian) attended. It is supposed that at this meeting the 
Orangemen remodelled their society. Mr. Mitchel says : " It is not easy 
to arrive at the exact truth respecting all the secret tests and oaths and 
degrees of this mischievous body; the precise forms have been from 
time to time altered, and their ' grand masters ' and their organs of the 
press have boldly denied what is alleged against the society, although 
such allegation had been true very shortly before, and was substantially 



218 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

true when denied, even if some trifling form may have been altered to 
justify the denial." Mr. Plowden also, writing in 1810, justly censures 
the disingenuousness of those Orangemen of education and fortune, who 
''affect to disclaim everything objectionable in the system, and to throw 
it exclusively upon the incorrigible ignorance and bigotry of the rabble, 
who are alike in every country and of every persuasion. This was base 
artifice to disguise or conceal the countenance and support which the 
Orange societies have uniformly and unceasingly received from govern- 
ment. If the obligations and oaths of Orangemen were of a virtuous 
and beneficial tendency, why not proclaim them aloud ? If illegal and 
dangerous, why criminally conceal them ? "Whilst the Orange aristoc- 
racy thus affect to disclaim their own institute in detail, their activity 
in keeping the evil on foot is supereminently criminal.'' 

I shall here anticipate events a little and give a passage from a 
speech delivered by O'Connell at an aggregate meeting held in May, 
1811: 

" From most respectable authority I have it, that Orange lodges are 
increasing in different parts of the country, with the knowledge of those 
whose duty it is to suppress them. If I have been misinformed, I would 
wish that what 1 now Bay may be replied to by any one able to show 
that 1 am wrong. 1 hold in my hand the certificate of an Orange purple- 
man [which he produced), who was advanced to that degree as lately as 
the 24th of April, 1811, in a lodge in Dublin. I have adduced this fact 
to show you thai this dreadful and abominable conspiracy is still in 
existence; and 1 am well informed, and belieye it to be the fact, that 
the king's ministry are well acquainted with this circumstance. I have 
been also assured thai the associations in the North are reorganized, 
and that a committee of these delegates in Belfasl have printed and 
distributed five hundred copies of their new constitution. This I have 
heard from excellent authority; and I should not be surprised if the 
attorney- general knows it. Yet there has been no attempt to disturb 
these conspirators, no attempt to visit them with magisterial authority, 
no attempt to rout this infamous banditti." 

The British government knew better than to interfere with the licen- 
tiousness of such useful allies as the Orange banditti in keeping down 
Ireland. The Convention Act and the acts against the administration 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 219 

of secret oaths were always ready in the legislative armory of the 
foreign government to he used against patriotic assemblies of delegates 
or against patriotic oath-bound societies. But the Orangemen were sure 
of impunity in all their proceedings ; the delegates that assembled at 
their meeting in Dublin had no need to be under the slightest apprehen- 
sion of a state-prosecution for violating the Convention Act. 

The duke of Eichmond, however, tried to play a double-dealing game. 
At the same time that his government did something more than connive 
at these Orange atrocities, he affected to discountenance bigoted demon- 
strations in his own presence. This was with a view to conciliate the 
Catholics, so as to prevent them from "agitating" for their rights. As 
there were many influential Catholics in Munster, he made a conciliatory 
tour through that province in the year 1809, and gave orders that no 
exclusive or marked displays of Orangeism should be allowed to take 
place along his line of route. At Bandon in Cork, the southern strong- 
hold of the Orange society, when the loyal Bandon legion paraded on 
the 1st of July to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, 
their commander and grand master astonished them by a very unusual 
style of address: "Those Orange emblems," said he, "are calculated to 
keep up animosities, and his grace the lord-lieutenant does not wish 
anything of the sort on the 'present occasion. 11 At once they dispersed, 
full of indignation. On the 6th, their next parade-day, they assembled 
defiantly, every man wearing orange lilies. When ordered to remove 
those emblems, or else to ground their arms, after a few moments of 
hesitation, with the exception of twenty-five, all the men of the legion, 
which was about six hundred strong, angrily threw down both arms and 
accoutrements. On the 24th of July they gave their reasons for so 
doing. This determined conduct of the Bandon Legion made the gov- 
ernment for a long time afraid of opposing the "loyal" displays of the 
Orange society, lest they should in any degree offend and alienate that 
strongest " garrison " for the maintenance of English dominion in 
Ireland. 

But, in spite of the drawback to the success of his tour, occasioned 
by the so-called "defection of the Bandon Orangemen," the viceroy did 
not wholly fail in the accomplishment of the primary object of his ex- 
cursion. He partially succeeded in gulling the credulous Catholics of 



220 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OONNELL. 

Munster. Though he was notoriously and zealously carrying out the 
sinister policy of the "No-Popery" government, the trampled people, 
long accustomed to contumely, could not help listening with something 
like satisfaction to his speeches, full of bland and conciliatory hypocrisy. 
It was so pleasant and comforting to the amour propre of the Catholics, 
still in a condition of semi-Helotism, to hear him courteously thanking 
Dr. Power, the Catholic bishop of Waterford, for his aid in putting down 
the disturbances in that county. It was still more delightfully soothing 
when he assured the bishop that he had special instructions from His 
Majesty to make no distinction between Protestant and Catholic, and 
when he lamented that he had no power to deviate from the laws that 
imposed disabilities on the Catholies. At the dinner given to him at 
the Mansion House in Cork, when the toast of " The Protestant Ascend- 
ency of Ireland" was announced, he declared he wished to see no ascend- 
ency in Ireland but that of loyalty. At another dinner, given by the 
merchants, traders and bankers of the same city, his beautiful sentiments 
of toleration out-IIeroded the balmiest style of English cant. He said, 
"He wondered that, religion being only occupied with a great object 
of eternal concern, men should be excited to rancorous enmity because 
they sought the same end by paths somewhat different." Mr. Mitchel 
says: "This kind of language, which has been the common style of Irish 
viceroys ever since, was first brought in vogue by the No-Popery duke 
of Eichmond." Be this as it may, his thrice-brassy British impudence 
gulled the Catholics more or less, and deadened for the time the vigor of 
their efforts to achieve emancipation, and this although many of the 
Irish Catholic soldiers in the British army were at this very period 
undergoing an absolute religious persecution. I shall here quote Mr. 
Mitchel's summary of one or two of those eases: 

"At Enniskillen, a Lieutenant Walsh turned a soldier's coat, in order 
to disgrace him for refusing to attend the Protestant service; others were 
effectually prevented from attending the service of their own church by 
an order not to quit the barracks till two o'clock on the Sunday, when 
the Catholic service was over, as at Newry. The case which acquired 
the most publicity, and produced the strongest effect upon Ireland, was 
that of Patrick Spenee, a private in the county Dublin militia, who had 
been required (though known to be a Catholic) to attend the divine 



THE LIFE Oh DANIEL O'CONNELL. 221 

service of the Established Church, and upon refusal was thrown into the 
Black Hole. During his imprisonment he wrote a letter to Major White, 
his commanding officer, urging that in obeying the paramount dictates 
of conscience he had in no manner broken in upon military discipline. 
He was shortly after brought to a court-martial, upon a charge that his 
letter was disrespectful and had a mutinous tendency. He was convict- 
ed, and sentenced to receive nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes. Upon 
being brought out to undergo that punishment, an offer was made to him 
to commute it for an engagement to enlist in a corps constantly serving 
abroad ; this he accepted, and was transmitted to the Isle of Wight, in 
order to be sent out of the kingdom. The case having been represented 
to the lord-lieutenant by Dr. Troy, the titular archbishop of Dublin, Mr. 
W. Pole wrote him a letter, which stated that the sentence had been 
passed upon Spence for writing the disrespectful letter — not denying, 
therefore admitting, that the committal to the 'Black Hole' was for 
the refusal to attend the Protestant church ; but that, under all the cir- 
cumstances, the commander-in-chief had considered the punishment 
excessive, and had ordered the man to be liberated and to join his regi- 
ment. When Spence arrived in Dublin, he was confined several days, 
and then discharged altogether from the army. The copy of Spence' s 
letter, which he vouched to be authentic, contained nothing in it either 
disrespectful or mutinous. The original letter was often called for, and 
always refused by those who had it in their possession, and might, con- 
sequently, by its production determine the justice of the sentence of 
nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes." 

No officer was ever punished or reprimanded for any one of the many 
instances of petty tyranny of this description that occurred. From this 
fact the reader may estimate the sincerity and practical worth of the 
duke's post-prandial sentiments of toleration. 

In the year 1809, Mr. Parnell tried, in the House of Commons, to 
carry a motion for inquiry into the mode of collecting tithes in Ireland. 
In the debate which followed, Sir John Newport accused Lord Castle- 
reagh of forgetting all the pledges he had made at the time of the union 
to promote the public welfare of Ireland. Castlereagh stated that he 
knew of no pledge made, either by Mr. Pitt or himself, about tithes or 
the Catholic question. He even audaciously denied that he had ever made 



222 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

any pledge whatever as to Ireland, Mr. C. Hutchinson assailed him also ; 
but Castlereagh was in a position to treat with scom these isolated 
efforts on behalf of Irish rights. The motion was of course set aside. 

In or about this time we find O'Connell attending an anti-tithe 
meeting in his native county, Kerry. He held up the advocates of the 
iniquitous and oppressive tithe-system to ridicule. He showed up the 
greed of the Protestant parsons, who took the potatoes of the Catholic 
peasantry as tithe, without giving them any value in return, and jocu- 
larly said, that, "if they deprived the peasant of the staff of life, they 
should carry him on their shoulders." He succeeded in carrying the anti- 
tithe resolutions. Probably this was his first occasion for displaying his 
oratorical powers in his native county. 

On the 24th of May. 1809, a well-attended meeting of Catholics was 
held in the Assembly Rooms, William street, Dublin. The requisition 
calling the meeting was signed by Lord Netterville, Sir Francis Goold, 
Daniel O'Connell, Richard O'Gorman (father to Richard O'Gorman of 
New York), Edward Hay (author of the history of the Wexford Rebellion), 
Denis Scully, Dr. Dromgoole and other familiar names. Mr. O'Gorman 
proposed to petition Parliament. John Keogh opposed this. He spoke 
bitterly of the treachery of English statesmen toward the Catholics in 
the affair of the union. In the English Commons they had nothing but 
enemies or lukewarm friends. The present ministry came into office on 
the express terms of excluding the Catholic claims. Their predecessors 
had willingly consented to abandon a bill, only nominally in favor of the 
Catholics, to save their places. The Catholics wore doubly deceived at 
the time of the union. The proposals for their support from the union- 
ists and anti-unionists were hollow. Had the Catholics been then lib- 
erally treated by their Parliament, they would have raised a cry in its 
defence, and the union would have been shaken to atoms. No one had 
a right to suppose he wished to relinquish the Catholic claims. With 
his dying breath he would recommend them uever to relax in the pursuit 
of their rights. No man could expect success to the petition. Without 
that expectation he saw no probability of aught but mischievous conse- 
quences from the measure. He resisted it not to retard, but to forward, 
their claims. 

Mr. Keogh's resolution passed; but the meeting then organized a 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 223 

new Catholic Committee, consisting of the Catholic peers, the survivors 
of the Catholic delegates of 1793, and certain gentlemen lately appointed 
by the Catholics of Dublin to prepare an address. The meeting resolved 
that these persons "do possess the confidence of the Catholic body.'* 
This committee was to consider the expediency of preparing a petition, 
not to the present, but to the next, session of Parliament. O'Connell, 
seeing clearly that this permanent general committee might, by the arti- 
fices of the jealous government, be made to appear as coming under the 
provisions of the Convention Act, introduced, with a view to guard against 
this legal danger, a resolution, "That the noblemen and gentlemen afore- 
said are not representatives of the Catholic body, or any portion thereof; 
nor shall they assume or pretend to be representatives of the Catholic 
body, or any portion thereof." O'Connell's resolution was carried unani- 
mously. Thus, while it was desirable that the committee should seem 
to speak the general sense of the Catholic body, because, whenever 
Grattan would present a Catholic petition in the House of Commons, he 
would be met invariably with the objection "that such petition did not 
speak the general sense of the Catholics," it was, at the same time, 
necessary to guard against the snares and perils of the Convention Act. 
But after all, in spite of O'Connell's ingenuity, a packed jury could 
easily be found to bring the members of the committee within the pro- 
visions of the Convention Act. Still, for the present, the Catholic cause 
seemed to acquire fresh vigor from the permanent organization of such 
an influential committee. The recent adhesion of a number of clever 
lawyers to the agitation also tended to increase its prestige. 

In the year 1810 the veto question came up again. The English 
Catholics were in favor of it. The Irish strenuously opposed it. A 
printed copy of a plan of emancipation, on the terms of giving the king 
a veto on the appointment of the Catholic bishops, while at the same 
time a state provision should be made for the clergy, was enclosed by 
Sir John Cox Hippesley, an English member of Parliament, in a letter to 
Dr. Troy. This was read by the secretary, Mr. Hay, to a large meeting 
of the Catholics of Dublin, held late in January, 1810. This project, 
tempting as it was, was rejected with indignation. Clergy and laity 
equally spurned it. A petition for unconditional emancipation was 
brought by Lord Fingal to London. Mr. Grattan, vexed at the opposi- 



224 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

tion to the veto, said he presented it merely to have the claims of the 
Catholics put on record. He was sorry no sentiment in favor of the veto 
seemed to prevail. "The pope," he said, "was almost certain now to be 
a subject of France; and a subject of France, or French citizen, could 
never be permitted to nominate the spiritual magistrates of the people 
of Ireland." This was more like opposing the prayer of the petition 
than supporting it. Grattan's violent horror of " French influence" was 
weak and absurd, utterly unworthy of so great an Irishman. It is not 
surprising that the motion in favor of the Catholics was lost by a major- 
ity of one hundred and four. In the upper House, Lord Donoughmore 
presented the petition, and supported it with an advocacy more generous 
than Grattan's. No one, he said, was ignorant that unity under one 
and the same head "was the essential distinguishing characteristic of 
the Catholic Church, and yet they were told that the Irish Catholics 
were the most unreasonable of men because they would not renounce 
upon oath this first tenet of their religion and consent to recognize a 
new head of their Church in the person of a Protestant king." He alsr 
ridiculed the apprehensions of the bigots. The petition, however, was 
rejected by a majority of eighty-six. 

In the course of the disputes on the veto question, which ranged over 
several years, O'Connell was opposed by Stephen Woulfe, a man who, 
after distinguishing himself both at the lay college of Maynooth and in 
Trinity College, was now one of the most promising of the Catholic law- 
yers — indeed, one of the most intellectual men, Catholic or Protestant, 
to be found at the Irish bar. He was also known in the world of letters. 
Woulfe was a native of the county Clare, where he inherited a small 
estate. He was a man of tall stature (six feet high), with a counte- 
nance that bespoke his mental power. In the early period of his pro- 
fessional career he took so much interest in the strife of politics that 
his friends thought he was neglecting his own affairs for the concerns 
of his country. However, he was destined, years after, when emancipa- 
tion was achieved, to attain the exalted dignity of lord chief-baron. Sir 
Michael O'Loghlen, the master of the rolls, and he, were the first Catholic 
judges. Plunket paid homage to Woulfe's great abilities, by asking in 
the English House of Commons, "What could compensate the British 
empire for the exclusion from its public service, which the penal laws 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 225 

necessitated, of such a mind as that of him who wrote the admirable 
treatise entitled ' The Balance of Evils ?'" It is stated by some that the 
famous apophthegm, " Property has its duties as well as its rights," the 
credit of which has been given to the Scotchman Drummond, in reality 
belongs to Woulfe, and that he communicated the saying in a letter to 
Drummond. At all events, a sentence of his — "To foster public opinion 
and make it racy of the soil" — was honored by being made the motto 
of that celebrated Irish patriotic paper, the old " Nation." "Woulfe had 
a shrill, piercing voice that lent a strange effect to his oratory. I have 
seen in the "Dublin Citizen" an odd description of its higher notes. 
The writer says, apparently without any intention to be funny, " Scald 
an eagle in melted lead, and his scream will give you some idea of the 
tones of Woulfe in a state of excitement." I quote this from memory. 
It is well that the writer didn't pun on the name of Wolfe Tone. I may 
add that O'Connell esteemed Woulfe highly, in spite of their difference 
of opinion on the question of the veto. 

On the morning of the 20th of January, 1843 (the repeal year), the 
Rev. Dr. Coll of Newcastle, county Limerick, at his own breakfast-table, 
after praising Chief-Baron Woulfe, then deceased, said to the liberator, 
" I believe, Mr. O'Connell, he was strongly opposed to you on the veto 
question." 

"Yes," answered O'Connell; "Woulfe thought that emancipation 
should be purchased at the expense of handing over to government the 
appointment of the Catholic bishops, under the name of a veto. The 
only occasion in which we came into public collision with each other on 
that subject was at a great meeting in Limerick, when he made a pow- 
erful speech — as powerful as could be made in a bad cause — in favor of 
the veto. He came forward to the front of the gallery — we were in the 
body of the house ; and in the delivery of his discourse there was mani- 
fested some little disposition to interrupt him, but I easily prevented 
that. When I rose in reply, I told the story of the sheep that were fat- 
tening under the protection of their dogs, when an address to them to 
get rid of their dogs was presented by the wolves. I said that the lead- 
ing Woulfe (pronounced wolf) came forward to the front of the gallery 
and persuaded the sheep to give up the dogs; they obeyed him, and 
were instantly devoured ; and I then expressed a hope that the Catholics 



2^6 . THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of Ireland would be warned by that example never to yield to a Woul/e 
again. With that pleasantly our differences ended ; for he admitted that 
the popular sentiment was against him, and he gave up any further 
agitation of the question." 

"I well recollect that occasion," said Dr. Coll to Mr. Daunt; "and 
afterward Woulfe observed : ' How useless it is to contend with O'Connell ! 
Here I have made an oration that I had been elaborating for three weeks 
previously, and this man entirely demolishes the effect of all my rhetoric 
by a flash of humor and a pun upon my name.' " 

Although this may have been O'Connell's only direct collision with 
Woulfe on the veto question, he had, nevertheless, other encounters 
with Woulfe that had reference to subjects of debate, which arose out 
of the divisions, among the emancipationists, on this angrily-vexed 
question. 

In the summer of the year 1810 a loud demand for the repeal of the 
accursed act of union was made in Dublin. It began with the Protest- 
ants, though subsequently the Catholics chimed in with their patriotic 
cry. In the corporation of Dublin, then exclusively Protestant, Mr. 
Hutton, pursuant to notice, made an able speech, in which he gave a 
vivid picture of the bankruptcy, famine, ruin and despair visible in 
every street of the city. The nation's debt, he said, was ninety millions 
sterling. Two millions, wrung from the sweat of the peasantry, were 
squandered abroad by absentees. Two millions and a half more went 
as interest on that insupportable debt. His resolutions to the effect 
that repeal was the cure for all these evils, in spite of the vehement 
opposition of Jack Giffard and his crew, were carried by a majority of 
thirty. 

Xext followed a requisition from the grand jurors of Dublin to the 
two high-sheriffs, Sir Edward Stanley and Sir James Riddall, to call a 
meeting of freemen and freeholders to consider "the necessity that exists 
of presenting a petition to His Majesty and the imperial Parliament 
for a repeal of the act of union." Stanley refused to summon the meet- 
ing; " it would agitate," said he, "the public mind." Riddall, however, 
called it, and, on the 18th of September, 1810, Protestants and Catho- 
lics were unanimous in ascribing the misery of their country to the ope- 
ration of the baneful union. On this occasion O'Connell made a powerful 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL OC0NNELL, 227 

speech. I shall give from it several specimens of our hero's eloquence 
at this comparatively early period of his public life. 

After a lively picture of the evil consequences of the union, which 
blighted all the bounteous gifts showered by Providence on Ireland and 
her inhabitants — after showing that the act was a violation of the 
national and inherent rights of the Irish people — after quoting the 
authorities of the greatest lawyers against its legality, the orator thus 
proceeds: "The union was, therefore, a manifest injustice, and it con- 
tinues to be unjust at this day; it was a crime, and must be still crim- 
inal, unless it shall be ludicrously pretended that crime, like wine, 
improves by old age, and that time mollifies injustice into innocence. 
You may smile at the supposition, but in sober sadness you must be 
convinced that we daily suffer injustice, that every succeeding day adds 
only another sin to the catalogue of British vice, and that if the union 
continues it will only make crime hereditary and injustice perpetual. 
We have been robbed, my countrymen, most foully robbed, of our birth- 
right, of our independence. May it not be permitted to us mournfully 
to ask how this consummation of evil was perfected ? . . . How, then, 
have we become enslaved ? Alas ! England, that ought to have been to 
us a sister and a friend — England, whom we had loved" [Humbug of the 
first water! most wonderful, and sometimes deluding, Daniel!) "and 
fought and bled for — England, whom we have protected, and whom 
we do protect — England, at a period when, out of one hundred thou- 
sand seamen in her service, seventy thousand were Irish — England 
stole upon us, like a thief in the night, and robbed us of the precious 
gem of our liberty ; she stole from us ' that which in naught enriched 
her, but made us poor indeed.' " ( What does he mean by saying, " that 
which in naught enriched her"?) "Keflect, then, my friends, on the 
means employed to accomplish this disastrous measure. I do not speak 
of the meaner instruments of bribery and corruption — we all know that 
everything was put to sale — nothing profane nor sacred was omitted in 
the union mart — offices in the revenue, commands in the army and navy, 
the sacred ermine of justice and the holy altars of God, were all profaned 
and polluted as the rewards of union services. By a vote in favor of the 
union, ignorance, incapacity and profligacy obtained certain promotion; 
and our ill-fated but beloved country was degraded to her utmost limits 



228 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

before she was transfixed in slavery. . . . Even the rebellion was an 
accidental and secondary cause ; the real cause of the union lay deeper, 
but is quite obvious. It is to be found at once in the religious dissensiovs 
which the enemies of Ireland have created and continued, and seek to 
perpetuate, amongst ourselves, by telling us of, and separating us into, 
wretched sections and miserable subdivisions. They separated the 
Protestant from the Catholic, and the Presbyterian from both; they 
revived every antiquated cause of domestic animosity, and they in- 
vented new pretexts of rancor; but above all, my countrymen, they 
belied and calumniated us to each other ; they falsely declared that we 
hated each other, and they continued to repeat the assert ion until we 
came to believe it; they succeeded in producing all the madness of parly 
and religious distinctions; and, while we were lost in the stupor of in- 
sanity, they plundered us of our country, and left us to recover at our 
leisure from the horrid delusion into which we had been so artfully 
conducted. 

"Such, then, were the means by which the union was effectuated. 
It has stripped us of commerce and wealth ; it lias degraded us, and 
deprived us not only of our station as a nation, but even of the name 
of our country; we are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our 
laws, for were the one hundred members who nominally represent Ire- 
land in what is called the imperial Parliament, — were they really our 
representatives, what influence could they, although unbought and 
unanimous, have over the five hundred and fifty-eight English and 
Scotch members? But what is the fact? Why, that oul of the one 
hundred, such as they are, that sit for this country, more than one-lift h 
know nothing of us, and are unknown to us. . . . Sir, when I talk of 
the utter ignorance, in Irish affairs, of the members of the imperial 
Parliament, I do not exaggerate or mistake — the ministers themselves 
are in absolute darkness with respect to this country. I undertake to 
demonstrate it. Sir, they have presumed to speak of the growing pros- 
perity of Ireland. I know them to be vile and profligate; 1 cannot be 
suspected of flattering them; yet, vile as they are, I do not believe they 
could have had the audacity to insert in the speech, supposed to be 
spoken by His Majesty, thai expression, had they known that, in fact, 
Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty. . . . When you detect the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 229 

ministers themselves in such gross ignorance as, upon such authority, to 
place an insulting falsehood, as it were, in the mouth of our revered 
sovereign, what, think you, can be the fitness of nine minor imps of 
legislation to make laws for Ireland ? . . . I would be glad to see the 
face of the man, or rather of the beast, who could dare to say he thought 
the union wise or good ; for the being who could say so must be devoid 
of all the feelings that distinguish humanity. . . . The union has con- 
tinued only because we despaired of its repeal. Upon this despair alone 
has it continued ; yet what can be more absurd than such despair ? If 
the Irish sentiment be but once known, if the voice of six millions be 
raised from Cape Clear to the Giants' Causeway, if the men most remark- 
able for loyalty to their king and attachment to constitutional liberty 
will come forward as the leaders of the public voice, the nation would, 
in an hour, grow too great for the chains that now shackle you, and the 
union must be repealed without commotion and without difficulty. Let 
the most timid amongst us compare the present probability of repealing 
the union with the prospect that, in the year 1795, existed of that meas- 
ure being ever brought about. Who in 1795 thought a union possible? 
Pitt dared to attempt it, and he succeeded ; it only requires the resolution 
to attempt its repeal — in fact, it requires only to entertain the hope of 
repealing it — to make it impossible that the union should continue. But 
that pleasing hope can never exist whilst the infernal dissensions on 
the score of religion are kept up. The Protestant alone could not 
expect to liberate his country ; the Roman Catholic alone could not do 
it ; neither could the Presbyterian ; but amalgamate the three into the 
Irishman, and the union is repealed. Learn discretion from your ene- 
mies : they have crushed your country by fomenting religious discord — 
serve her by abandoning it for ever. Let each man give up his share 
of the mischief; let each man forsake every feeling of rancor. But I 
say not this to barter with you, my countrymen ; I require no equivalent 
from you. Whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed. I trample 
under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfere with the repeal : I 
abandon all wish for emancipation, if it delays the repeal. Nay, were 
Mi Perceval to-morrow to offer me the repeal of the union upon the terms 
of re-enacting the entire penal code, I declare it from my heart, and in the 
presence of my God, that I ivould most cheerfully embrace his offer. Let 



230 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked and groundless 
animosities on the altar of our country ; let that spirit which, heretofore 
emanating from Dungannon, spread all over the island and gave light 
and liberty to the land, be again cherished amongst us; let us rally 
around the standard of old Ireland, and we shall easily procure that 
greatest of political blessings, an Irish king, an Irish House of Lords 
and an Irish House of Commons." Long-continued applause followed 
the close of this noble peroration. Resolutions to petition for repeal 
were adopted unanimously. This speech not merely produced a great 
effect on the audience, that listened to it with breathless attention in the 
hall of the Royal Exchange, but it deeply moved the entire nation. The 
cause of repeal, from first to last, stirred to its inmost depths the heart 
of O'Connell, and consequently his words on the theme of self-govern- 
ment always had magical effect on the minds and feelings of his coun- 
trymen. His appeals to the sentiment of Irish nationality never failed 
to find a response in eveiy true Irishman's heart, aye, to agitate the 
true man's whole being to its very centre. 

From the moment that this oration, printed on a broad sheet and 
surmounted with the orator's portrait, was circulated throughout the 
island, the Catholics looked with pride and hope and exultation to our 
hero as their future leader; and, in truth, before the close of that very 
year, O'Connell was the recognized leader of the Irish people — at least 
of the people of the old, unconquerable Celtic race. I shall take from 
Mr. Daunt's 'Personal Recollections" "the liberator's" own short nar- 
rative of his accession to the popular leadership : 

" I also spoke in support of the repeal," said O'Connell, referring to 
the great meeting at the Exchange, which I have just spoken of, "and 
thenceforth do I date my first great lift in popularity. Keogh saw that 
I was calculated to become a leader. He subsequently tried to impress 
me with his own policy respecting Catholic affairs. The course he then 
recommended was a sullen quiescence; he urged that the Catholics 
should abstain altogether from agitation, and he labored hard to bring 
me to adopt his views. But I saw that agitation was our only available 
weapon. I saw that by incessantly keeping our demands and our griev- 
ances before the public and the government we must sooner or later 
succeed. Moreover, that period, above all others, was not one at which 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 231 

our legitimate weapon, agitation, could have prudently been let to rust. 
It was during the war, and while Napoleon — that splendid madman!" 
(Oh, Daniel, for shame!) — "made the Catholics of Ireland so essential 
to the military defence of the empire, the time seemed peculiarly appro- 
priate to press our claims. About that period a great Catholic meeting 
was held. John Keogh was then old and infirm, but his presence was 
eagerly desired, and the meeting awaited his arrival with patient good- 
humor. I and another were deputed to request his attendance. John 
Keogh had this peculiarity — that when he was waited on about matters 
of business, he would talk away on all sorts of subjects, except the busi- 
ness which had brought his visitors. Accordingly, he talked a great 
deal about everything except Catholic politics for the greatest portion of 
our visit; and when at length we pressed him to accompany us to the 
meeting, the worthy old man harangued us for a quarter of an hour to 
demonstrate the impolicy of publicly assembling at all, and ended by 
coming to the meeting. He drew up a resolution, which denounced the 
continued agitation of the Catholic question at that time. This resolu- 
tion, proceeding as it did fron: a tried old leader, was carried. I then 
rose and proposed a counter-resolution, pledging us all to incessant, un- 
relaxing agitation; and such were the wiseacres with whom I had to 
deal, that they passed my resolution in the midst of enthusiastic accla- 
mations, without once dreaming that it ran directly counter to John 
Keogh' s! Thenceforward, I may say, I was the leader. Keogh called 
at my house some short time after ; he paid me many compliments, and 
repeated his importunities that I might alter my policy. But I was 
inexorable; my course was resolved upon and taken. I refused to 
yield. He departed in bad humor, and I never saw him afterwards. 

" Keogh was undoubtedly useful in his day. But he was one who 
would rather that the cause should fail than that anybody but himself 
should have the honor of carrying it." 

In truth, before the repeal meeting O'Connell had virtually become 
leader. A vote of thanks had been passed by the Catholic Committee 
to Keogh " for his long and faithful services to the cause of Catholic 
emancipation." Also a manifesto, signed "Daniel O'Connell, chairman," 
had been issued by the same body, urging the people to adopt a new and 
more combined form of political action. The continual rejection of the 



232 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

Catholic petitions by the Houses of Parliament showed plainly that, to 
make the Catholic cause succeed, a more vigorous policy and a more 
energetic will were required, than had hitherto been brought forward to 
direct the movement. O'Connell's address proposed a plan of action 
somewhat similar to that adopted in all his subsequent agitations. The 
committee was to act as a central body in Dublin. But there were also 
to be permanent local boards all through the country, holding commu- 
nication, indeed, with the central body, but preserving a large power of 
independent action. Frequent local meetings were recommended, from 
which beneficial results to the general cause were expected ■ by the com- 
mittee. This system of self-agency, it was argued, would produce cohe- 
rence of conduct adequate to insure success. " In the exercise of the 
elective franchise, for instance," the address said, "what infinite good 
might not result from Catholic coherence! What painful examples are 
annually exhibited of the mischief flowing from the want of this cohe- 
rence!" The mode of action of the organization was to be peaceful and 
legal ; at the same time there was the half-uttered threat, or at least 
kmt, that the people, if redress of their grievances were delayed too 
long, might at last lose patience and seek to win their rights by violent 
methods. 

Though repeal of the union was probably dearer to O'Connell's heart 
(we have his own word, repeatedly uttered, that it was so), and assuredly 
dearer to the hearts of the majority of the Irish people, than emancipa- 
tion, jet, as the latter was, for obvious reasons, easier of achievement 
than the former (I have shown, at the commencement of the preliminary 
sketch, why the latter could be achieved by peaceful agitation, and why, 
according to my judgment, the former could not), so he deemed it the 
practical question to grapple with in the first instance. Emancipation 
once achieved, he might begin to look for repeal. 

In carrying on his agitations O'Connell was not ashamed of repeat- 
ing himself frequently in his speeches. It was impossible for a man, 
speaking so often on the same subjects, to avoid this repetition. Be- 
sides, in politics, as in religion, the broad and grand essential truths are 
comparatively tew in number, and tiny need constant iteration. Napo- 
leon and Fox believed in the efficacy of repetition to saturate the mind 
with conviction. When The Dublin Evening Mail sneered at O'Connell 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COjSTNELL. 233 

for repeating himself, making light of the censure, he merely said that 
he would continue to enunciate those great truths again and again. 
The following remarks, made to his friend Mr. Daunt one day, immedi- 
ately after he had given a clever rehash of many former speeches at the 
Corn Exchange, are valuable, as giving his notions on the subject of 
repetition : 

"Now there are many men who shrink from repeating themselves, 
and who actually feel a repugnance to deliver a good sentiment or a 
good argument, just because they have delivered that sentiment or that 
argument before. This is very foolish. It is not by advancing a polit- 
ical truth once or twice, or even ten times, that the public will take it 
up and firmly adopt it. No ; incessant repetition is required to impress 
political truths upon the public mind. That which is but once or twice 
advanced may possibly strike for a moment, but will then pass away 
from the public recollection. You must repeat the same lesson over and 
over again if you hope to make a permanent impression — if, in fact, you 
hope to infix it on your pupil's memory. Such has always been my 
practice. My object was to familiarize the whole people of Ireland with 
important political truths, and I could never have done this if I had not 
incessantly repeated those truths. I have done so pretty successfully. 
Men, by always hearing the same things, insensibly associate them with 
received truisms. They find the facts at last quietly reposing in a corner 
of their minds, and no more think of doubting them than if they formed 
part of their religious belief. I have often been amused when at public 
meetings men have got up and delivered my old political lessons in my 
presence as if they were new discoveries worked out by their own inge- 
nuity and research. But this was the triumph of my labor. I had 
made the facts and sentiments so universally familiar that men took 
them up and gave them to the public as their own." 

One of the reporting staff, on constant duty at the Repeal Associa- 
tion, once remarked to Mr. O'Neill Daunt, " Mr. O'Connell always wears 
out one speech before he gives us another." 

In October, 1810, King George the Third became a lunatic once 
more, or perhaps it would be more correct to say he sank into drivelling 
idiotcy. From this attack he never recovered. The little stock of wits he 
ever possessed was now gone for ever. From this time forward, in hopeless 



23tt THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

and helpless imbecility and darkness, his bodily vision darkened like 
his mental, the aged king dragged along the remaining years of his now 
wretched existence, confined to his palace, occasionally knocking his 
hoary head, discrowned by God's dread visitation, against the velvet- 
lined and carefully-padded walls of his sumptuous apartments, as he 
went wandering and groping about amid regal magnificence which 
seemed to be a bittery mockery of 

" This old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm." 

For over a decade of weary years the "once-feared" monarch survived 
thus miserably. While he had been at all able to exercise the functions 
of royalty, he had been an inveterate foe and an insuperable obstacle 
to the realization of Catholic emancipation, more through a perverted 
conscientiousness than a deliberate inclination to oppress. As he was 
narrow-minded to a degree, his conscience was called on to sanctify 
the most erroneous notions. His natural firmness then, as a matter 
of course, degenerated into a stupid and obstinate clinging to wrong. 
Thus his obstinacy in the dispute with the American colonies cost Eng- 
land her noblest American dependencies, millions of treasure and 
deluges of blood. The same obstinacy exercised its baneful influence 
over his European policy. But above all, the Catholics of Ireland looked 
on it as the source of their continued thraldom. 

Accordingly, the accession of his eldest son, George, prince of Wales, 
to the regency filled them with extravagant hopes. In fact, they believed 
at first that the only obstacle to their emancipation was at length re- 
moved. The regent had not merely made repeated professions of his 
good-will to the Catholics and their cause ; he was even known to have 
pledged himself expressly, on more than one occasion, that as soon as 
he should enjoy the regal authority he would do everything in his power 
to secure Catholic emancipation. In 1806 he had pledged himself to lliis 
efl'cct through the duke of Bedford, in order to induce the Catholics not 
to urge their claims. Chancellor Ponsonby, the same year, put forward a 
similar promise in the name of the prince-regent. It was stated that he 
had given such a pledge to Lord Kenmare at Cheltenham. But, above all, 
it was believed that he had given a formal pledge to Lord Fingal, in the 
presence of the lords Petre and Clifford, and that this pledge was taken 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 235 

down in writing and signed by these noblemen shortly after the termi- 
nation of the royal interview. Whatever disputes might arise about 
particular cases of alleged promises on his part, there was no doubt 
whatever that the prince had bound himself in honor to the sustainment 
of the Catholic cause on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, this 
base and thoroughly-depraved wretch, whose whole life proves him to 
have been utterly destitute of faith and truth and honor, yet who has 
been styled, with pretty general acceptance (such is the innate flunkey- 
ism of the majority of mankind), "the finest gentleman of his age," no 
sooner found himself in possession of the regal power than he resolved, 
without scruple or hesitation, on violating all his pledges. In short, he 
retained the sanctimonious bigot Perceval as his prime minister, and 
surrounded himself with the bitterest enemies of the Catholic cause. It 
has been stated that he was influenced to this violation of his plighted 
faith and honor chiefly by the persuasions and fascinations of the mar- 
chioness of Hertford, the lady who was his mistress at the time he 
became prince-regent. This bewitching siren was then somewhat mo^e 
than fifty years of age. The taste of his royal highness generally pre- 
ferred lady-loves who were "fat, fair and forty" to more youthful and 
less full-blown charmers. On the present occasion, the royal voluptuary 
took delight in beauty still more ripened by time. I shall shortly have 
occasion to refer to this mature enchantress, Lady Hertford, and the 
famous "witchery" resolutions that were called forth by her anti-Cath- 
olic interference. 

The prince was not content even with breaking his promise to the 
Catholics. An aggressive policy towards the Catholic Committee was 
resolved on. An attempt to suppress it must be made. It was all very 
well to tolerate it while a feeble, pliable peer, a friend to the veto, too, 
like Lord Fingal, was the recognized head of the Catholics, but, with a 
bold and vigorous intellect, like O'Connell's, directing their affairs, the 
committee was likely to become too formidable to "the powers that be." 
Accordingly, on the 12th of February, 1811, Wellesley Pole, who had 
succeeded his brother, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the latter was now com- 
manding the British army in the Peninsula), as chief secretary for Ire- 
land, issued a confusedly- writ ten circular, addressed to the sheriffs and 
principal magistrates of Ireland. In this document the Catholic Com- 



236 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

mittee is denounced as "an unlawful assembly sitting in Dublin." 
Wellesley Pole was desirous to bring the action of the members of the 
Catholic Committee within the sweep of the Convention Act. His cir- 
cular contains the following not very lucid directions to the sheriffs : 
"You are required, in pursuance of the provisions of an act of the 33d 
of the king, c. 29, to cause to be arrested and commit to prison (unless 
bail shall be given) all persons within your jurisdiction who shall be 
guilty of giving, or having given or published, any written or other 
notice of the election or appointment, in any manner, of such repre- 
sentative, delegate or manager as aforesaid; or if attending, voting or 
acting; or of having attended, voted or acted in any manner in the 
choice or appointment of such representative, delegate or manager; and 
you are to communicate these directions, as far as lies in your power, 
forthwith to the several magistrates of the same county." 

O'Connell, as we have seen, had exercised all his foresight to secure 
the committee from the snares of the Convention Act. His foresight, 
however, proved unavailing. The imprudence of some of his associates 
gave an opening to the government. Lord Fingal and others were 
arrested. The question, whether the provisions of the Convention Act 
had been violated, was submitted to a jury, in the persons of Dr. Sheri- 
dan and Mr. Kirwan. The state prosecution of Dr. Sheridan com- 
menced on the 21st of November, 1811. The question was, what did 
the words in the act, " under pretence of petitioning," mean ? The Crown 
lawyers maintained that pretence meant purpose, and that the Catholics, 
even when meeting for the bond fide [genuine, in good faith) purpose of 
petitioning, came under the prohibitions of the Convention Act. The 
counsel for the traverser maintained that if delegates assembled really 
and truly to petition Parliament, then the meeting was quite legal. The 
Castle was baffled. O'Connell gained great credit by this case. He was 
not, indeed, a leading counsel. Being kept by the Catholic disabilities 
from the inner bar, of course the king's counsel took precedence of him. 
But he was able to show his great skill in cross-examination. No man 
could surpass him in throwing a witness off his guard, by firsl asking 
him a series of apparently indifferent questions, and then, having led 
him into the snare, perplexing and confounding him by a rapid lire of 
unexpected interrogatories. Besides, it was generally believed that the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 237 



plan of defence was suggested by him. The escape of Dr. Sheridan was 
a great triumph, especially as the jury were Protestants. 

The Catholics, elated by their triumph, resolved to hold a meeting 
for the purpose of petitioning. They assembled in Fishamble Street 
Theatre a few days after the trial. Before Lord Fingal, who, it was 
intended, should be chairman, had arrived, a police-magistrate entered 
and stood beside the vacant chair. He excited no small amount of 
curiosity in the minds of those present. On the arrival of Lord Fingal, 
the combative Counsellor Hussey — he of the fiery red locks — at once 
stood up and moved "that the earl of Fingal do take the chair." 
O'Connell quietly seconded the motion. Next, Lord JSTetterville moved 
and Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman, barrister, seconded the resolution, that 
"the Catholic petition be now read." At this stage of the proceedings 
the police magistrate began taking a part in the scene, and the action of 
the drama became interesting and lively. 

Police Magistrate. " My Lord Fingal, I beg to state my object in com- 
ing here. His Excellency the lord-lieutenant has been informed that 
this is a meeting of the Catholic Committee, composed of the peers, 
prelates, country gentlemen and persons chosen in the different parishes 
of Ireland. I come here by direction of the lord-lieutenant, and as a 
magistrate of the city of Dublin I ask you, the chairman of this meet- 
ing, if that be the case, and if so, what is your object ?" 

Lord Fingal. "Our purpose in coming here is perfectly legal and 
constitutional." 

Magistrate. " That is not an answer to my question." 

Lord Fingal. " What is your question ?" 

Magistrate. " I ask, is this a meeting of the Catholic Committee — a 
meeting composed of the peers, prelates, country gentlemen and others 
of the city of Dublin?" 

Lord Fingal. " I certainly do not feel myself bound to give you any 
other answer than that I have already given. We have met for the sole, 
legal and constitutional purpose of petitioning." 

Magistrate "My lord, I ask you, as chairman of this meeting, in 
what capacity are yon met?" 

Lord. Fingal. "We are met to petition Parliament." It is clear that 
Lord Fingal is determined not to let the magistrate get much out of him. 



238 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 

Magistrate. " My lord, that is not an answer to my question. I hope 
I have leave to speak?" 

Some disturbance among the people had occurred at this point of the 
proceedings. However, it stopped, when several voices cried out, " Hear 
the magistrate ! Hear the magistrate !" 

Magistrate. " I beg leave to ask your lordship again, is this a meet- 
ing of the Catholic Committee, constituted by the Catholic peers, 
prelates, country gentlemen and the persons appointed in the several 
parishes of Dublin ?" 

Lord Fingal. " I am not aware that I can give you any other answer 
than that I have already given." 

Magistrate. " Then, my lord, your answer is that you are a meeting 
of Catholics assembled for a legal and constitutional purpose ?" 

Here several persons cried out, "No, no; there was no answer in 
such terms." 

O'Connell. "It is a most unusual thing for any magistrate to come 
into a public meeting to catechise, ask questions and put his own con- 
structions upon the answers." 

Magistrate. " My lord, am I to understand that you decline telling 
me fully what meeting you are, and the purpose of your meeting?" 

Lord Fingal. "We are met for a legal and constitutional puipose.'' 

Magistrate. "I wish to be distinctly understood. Am I to under- 
stand that you will give no other answer to my question ? Do you give 
no other answer ?" 

Here some disturbance interrupted the magistrate. One person 
cried, "Read the petition;" another cried, "Where's Mr. Hay? Hear 
the magistrate!" 

Magistrate. " My Lord Fingal, I consider your declining to give mc 
an answer as an admission that this is the Committee of the Catholics 
of Ireland." 

CPConnell. "As what passes here may be given in evidence, I beg 
leave to say that the magistrate has received a distinct answer to his 
question. It is not for him to distort any answer he has received into 
a meaning of his own ; he is to take the words in their literal signifi- 
cation." 

Magistrate. "My lord, I consider your refusing to give any other 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 239 



answer as an admission of the fact of this being the Catholic Com- 
mittee." 

O'Connell. "If you please to tell gentlemen that such is your belief, 
it is of no consequence to us. We are not to be bound by your opinion." 

Magistrate, doggedly. " Does your lordship deny that this is the Cath- 
olic Committee?" 

Counsellor Finn. " My Lord Fingal has neither given you admission 
nor denial." 

O'Connell. " We do not want the magistrate's assistance to make out 
meanings for us. Let him not imagine that he can bind this meeting 
by any assertion he thinks proper to make." 

Magistrate. " Then I repeat that your lordship's refusal to give me a 
direct answer is an admission that this meeting is the Catholic Com- 
mittee, and being such, it is an unlawful assembly. As such I require 
it to disperse. It is my wish to discharge my duty in as mild a manner 
as possible. I hope no resistance will be offered. I hope that I need 
not have recourse to the means I am intrusted with for the purpose of 
dispersing the meeting." 

Lord Fingal. " I do not intend to resist the laws, but I shall not 
leave this seat until I am forced to do so, that I may bring an action 
against the person removing me." 

Magistrate. " My lord, I shall remove you from the chair. My doing 
so will be an arrest." 

Taking Lord Fingal by the arm, the magistrate, with a gentle vio- 
lence, so to speak, pushed him out of the chair. Immediately Counsellor 
O'Gorman moved Lord Netterville into the chair; but this nobleman, in 
his turn, was expelled by the magistrate. Finally, when a third chair- 
man, the Hon. Mr. Barnewell, was proposed, the meeting separated at 
the recommendation of Sir Edward Bellew.* 

* The principal authorities consulted in writing the foregoing chapter are : " The History of 
Ireland, from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 180.1, to October, 1810," by Francis Plowden, 
Esq. ; MitcheFs "Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," Dublin, 
J. Mullany, etc.; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" "Personal Recollections," by O'Neill Daunt; 
" The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, 
Jihn O'Connell, Esq.;" "Grattan's Speeches;" Wise's "History of the Catholic Association," etc. 



CHAPTER X. 

Aggregate meeting at Fishamble Street Theatre — Percy Bysshe Shelley declares 
for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the union — Suppression of the Cath- 
olic Committee — It is succeeded by the Catholic Board — Powerful speech of 
O'Connell; his onslaught on Sir Charles Saxton and Wellesley Pole — Dissen- 
sions BETWEEN THE ARISTOCRATIC AND POPULAR SECTIONS OF THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT — 

Lord Ffrench and the "Edinburgh Review" assail the Catholic lawyers— Edmund 
Burke on the appointment of Irish Catholic bishops by the Crown — O'Connell 
rouses the Irish Catholics from the torpor of serfdom; his daring denuncia- 
tions of tyranny — His indulgence in personalities — Bill for exchanging the 
English and Irish militias; O'Connell denounces it; an address of thanks is 
sent to him from Dingle — Splendid speech of Grattan in favor of Catholic eman- 
cipation — O'Connell's generous admiration of Grattan — Lively scene in the 
House of Commons; Colonel Hutchinson brands the Act of Union; the House is 

TURNED INTO A BEAR-GARDEN — ASSASSINATION OF THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr. PERCEVAL ; 

O'Connell's speech on this event — The Liverpool ministry — Peel chief secretary 
for Ireland — Peel on O'Connell — O'Connell's style of eloquence. 

^-IMMEDIATELY after the singular occurrence with which I con- 




eluded the last chapter, a requisition, signed by three hundred 
mimes, and calling on the Catholics to assemble at an aggre- 
gate meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, was placarded on 
the walls of Dubin. The new meeting, not being an assembly 
of delegates, but an aggregate one, afforded the magistrates no legal 
pretext for dispersing it like the former. O'Connell admitted, at this 
meeting, that a magistrate was legally entitled to ask any assemblage 
of people, whether or not they were assembled for a legal purpose; 
but he denied that a magistrate had any authority to catechise them 
further. According to O'Connell, he should be prepared to act on their 
answer to his first question. Our hero praised the prudent conduct of 
the chairman of the other meeting, who had afforded no precedent for 
the continuation of such a practice. This prudent course of the chair- 
man, he said, would be henceforth a protection against the vexatious 
interruptions of ignorance and presumption. He denied that, in hold- 
ing an aggregate meeting instead of a meeting of the committee, thr 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 241 



Catholics shrank from the ground on which they had stood before. It 
was not the Catholics, it was the government, that shrank. The Cath- 
olics had always contended for the right of petition ; they did not now 
shrink from a trial of its legality. It was the Crown lawyers who 
shrank from it. He threatened proceedings against the authorities. 
Finally, he told his audience that perseverance alone was needed — a 
firm and temperate determination — to make their cause in the end 
successful. 

One thing, in addition to the peculiar circumstances under which it 
was summoned, renders this meeting worthy of notice. It was attended 
by one of the most celebrated English poets of those days — the benevo- 
lent, but mistaken, Percy Bysshe Shelley — doomed, alas! to find, not 
many years later, an untimely death in the waters of the gulf of Spezzia. 
The tone which he adopted at this meeting was one of moderation. At 
this time he seems to have taken considerable interest in Irish affairs. 
Some observations of his remain, which — along with a certain visionary 
wildness and extravagance, a certain mingling of the jargon of pseudo- 
philanthropy and progress, so prevalent in this canting nineteenth cen- 
tury; a certain Utopianism, in short — show manifest signs of a heart 
and imagination and intellect better able to realize the peculiar features 
and difficulties of the Irish question, than Englishmen in general, even 
those of the highest intellect, or even many of our Irishmen, could boast 
of. At all events, he was able to see clearly that emancipation, gained 
by itself, would, in any sense worth speaking of, profit only "the higher 
orders of the Catholic persuasion;" and he also had sufficient insight to 
perceive that, in a consideration of Ireland's grievances and obstacles to 
prosperity, the paramount grievance and obstacle even in those days 
was the thrice-accursed union. The observations of Shelley are worth 
quoting here : 

" It is my opinion that the claims of the Catholic inhabitants of Ire- 
land, if gained to-morrow, would in a very small degree aggrandize their 
liberty or happiness. The disqualifications principally affect the higher 
orders of the Catholic persuasion ; these would chiefly be benefited by 
their removal. Power and wealth do not benefit, but injure, the cause 
of freedom and virtue. I am happy, however, at the near approach of 
this emancipation, because I am inimical to all disqualifications for 



242 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

opinion. It will not add one comfort to the cottager, will snatch not 
one from the dark dungeon, will root out not one vice, alleviate not one 
pang. Tet it is a foreground of a picture, in the dimness of whose dis- 
tance I behold the lion he down with the lamb and the infant play with 
the basilisk ; for it supposes the extermination of the eyeless monster, 
Bigotry, whose throne has tottered for two hundred years. I hear the 
teeth of the palsied beldam Superstition chatter, and I see her descend- 
ing to the grave. Reason points to the open gates of the temple of 
religious freedom; Philanthropy kneels at the altar of the common God. 
I regard the admission of the Catholic claims and the repeal of the Union 
Act as blossoms of that fruit, which the summer sun of improved intel- 
lect and progressive virtue are destined to mature. I will not pass 
without reflection the legislative union between Great Britain and Ire- 
land; nor will I speak of it as ;i grievance so tolerable or unimportant 
in its nature as that of Catholic disqualification. The latter affects few, 
the union affects thousands; the one distpialifies the rich from power, 
the other impoverishes the peasant, adds beggary to the city, famine to 
the country, multiplies abjectness, whilst misery and crime play into 
each other's hands under its withering auspices. I esteem, then, the 
annihilation of this second grievance as something more than a mere 
sign of good. I esteem it to be in itself a substantial benefit. The 
aristocracy of Ireland (much as I disapprove of other distinctions than 
those of virtue and talent, I consider it useless, hasty and violent not 
for the present to acquiesce in their continuance) — the aristocracy of 
Ireland suck the veins of its inhabitants, and consume that blood in 
England." 

All these proceedings, however, ended in the suppression of the 
Catholic Committee. The counter-prosecution, undertaken against Lord 
Chief-Justice Downes for signing the warrants for the apprehension of 
the Catholic leaders, the illegality of which the verdict in Dr. Sheridan's 
case seemed to determine, failed in spite of O'Connell's vigorous efforts. 
In short, the government had gained its point in suppressing the Cath- 
olic Committee. That body was succeeded by the Catholic Board, which 
at first manifested an equal share of courage and energy. 

While the affairs of the Catholics remained in this critical position 
O'Connell was increasing his reputation both as ;i lawyer and a political 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 243 



leader. When the attorney-general, Saurin, presumed to impute trea- 
sonable intents to the Catholic Committee, O'Connell, with his usual 
forensic boldness, told him in open court that his charge was "false and 
groundless." At another Catholic meeting, which took place on the 
29th of February, 1812, after a vote of thanks to the general committee 
of the Catholics of Ireland had been moved, coupled with a request 
"that they would not meet until the legality of their doing so should be 
decided," O'Connell spoke, at considerable length, to a resolution of 
thanks "to our friends in Parliament, Earl Grey and Lord Grenville." 
In this harangue O'Connell covered with ridicule the jury, the judges 
and the prosecuting counsel who had taken part in Mr. Kirwan's case. 
He also denounced the secretary, Sir Charles Saxton, who had been 
guilty of shameful interference with the arrangement of the jury -list. I 
shall give some extracts from this speech : 

" The first topic that presented itself was the late trial of Mr. Kir- 
wan. That trial had proved only what was already well known — namely, 
that it was possible for the Irish administration, with all its resources, 
to find a single jury to take upon itself to swear that pretence means 
purpose, and that the man who was admitted, by his prosecutors and 
judges, to be innocent in act and intention, was in law and fact guilty. 

"It, however, proved that one such jury was possible, for those who 
saw that jury must admit that it was not in human nature to afford 
such another. Why, the administration had been so diligent in the 
search of originals, that they had actually found out a Mr. Donovan, 
who keeps or kept a crockery-ware shop on the Quays, and who, until 
the second day of the trial, never had heard of the subject-matter of the 
trial! So he declared before he was sworn on the jury. What think 
you of any man, not absolutely deaf, who had been for three preceding 
months in Dublin, and had never before heard of that prosecution ? 

"But a verdict obtained in the manner that had been was of no im- 
portance. The public mind was in nowise affected by it. It was antici- 
pated, from the commencement of the pieces of plain prose with which 
the prosecution was opened, to the morsel of brilliant hypocrisy with 
which it was closed. The verdict was of no estimation, even in the 
opinion of the very prosecutors, who felt the impossibility of obtaining 
another; and in that despair relinquished this extraordinary crusade 



244 THE LIFE OF DAX1EL O'CONNELL. 

against the right of petition. To this despair alone could be traced the 
abandonment of the opposition to allow the Catholics the poor privilege 
of placing themselves in a body upon their knees. 

" Two traces had been left on the memory of the late state trial. The 
one was ludicrous — the other had in it something of a more grave 
nature. The first merely recalled the recollection of the farcical epi- 
thets applied by the solicitor-general (Bit site) to three individuals. Of 
the attorney-general he had said 'that he was the most learned and 
wisest of mankind' (a very general laugh). Mr. Justice Day he called 
a magnanimous judge' (much and very general laughter)] and what was 
still more ridiculous, he styled himself 'a friend to the Catholics of Ire- 
land' (shouts of laughter). The magnanimous judge had, indeed, returned 
the compliment, and in a speech which was, with some absurdity, called 
the passing of sentence on Mr. Kirwan, but which, in fact, was, what it 
ought to be, an eulogium on that gentleman — an eulogium in which all 
classes would readily join — the magnanimous judge retorted the compli- 
ment, and called the solicitor-general 'the friend of the Catholics.' 

"Good God! what a notion those men must have of our stupidity! 
what dupes and idiots they must take us to be! I am ready to concede 
'magnanimity' to the judge; but that this barrister should be our 
friend — that he who commenced his political career with being, whilst 
yet young, the supporter of the blood-written administration of Lord 
Camden — that he who can look at his own children, and then doom ours 
to be degraded — who lias shown himself ready to embrace any servitude, 
in the way of his profession, and to ensure his promotion — that man 
may continue to persecute us — I consent — but he shall never enjoy the 
notion of our considering him as a 'friend ;' we know him well." 

He next attacks the interference of Sir Charles Saxton with the jury- 
list as the graver recollection left behind by Kirwan's trial : 

"I own I was so far deceived as to expect that all that was solemn 
and sanctified about the chief-justice would have been roused into the 
semblance of animation when he heard that the Crown solicitor and Sir 
Charles Saxton hunted in couples for the knowledge of the jury. I, in 
vain, hoped to see the spark of what I should call honest constitutional 
fire illumine all that was dark and delightful in the pomp of religious 
display; but no, alas! no; the interference, whatever it was, of the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 245 

chief secretary of the Castle respecting a jury in Dublin, passed off 
without arousing one slumbering emotion, and precisely as if the chief 
secretary were the accustomed assistant of the attorney for the prose- 
cution. 

" But this is a grave and serious subject. Of what value is property, 
of what value is life, if the chief secretary of the Castle, with all the 
power, all the wealth and all the influence of the Crown in his hands, is 
to take any part whatsoever respecting the management of the jury?" 

He next blames himself and others, who had the conduct of Mr. 
Kirwan's defence, for neglecting to examine Sir Charles Saxton. The 
solicitor-general had promised "that the counsel for the Crown would 
sift the transaction to the bottom." Eeferring to this false promise, O'Con- 
nell says : " Those were his words ; we idly believed him, when he com- 
pelled Sir Charles to attend. Of course we were deceived; but why, 
then, did we not ourselves examine the secretary? I must confess I 
cannot tell. It passed over, and we all felt our error. Would to God 
we had examined him ! "Would to God we had sifted him on his oath — 
where, from whom, when he got the jury-list? how it happened that the 
numbers were altered ? was it corruption ? was it a miracle ? . . . 

"Allow me to say one word more as to the late trial. The prosecu- 
tors insulted us by excluding every Catholic from the jury; they injured 
us, too, by excluding every Presbyterian. How I thank them for the 
compliment they paid, on this second trial, to the sterling integrity of 
the Irish Presbyterians — the very best class of men in any community I 
To all that is generous and warm in the Irish character, they add a firm- 
ness and a discretion which improves every manly virtue. I do greatly 
admire the friends of religious and civil liberty, the Presbyterians of 
Ireland." 

After these broad and generous sentiments of toleration — the like of 
which, I regret to say, are seldom heard among leading Irish Catholics, 
and scarcely ever among English Catholics, in our own day — O'Connell 
uttered some rather questionable sentiments on the subject of secret 
conspiracy and on certain schemes then afloat in Ireland among certain 
disaffected persons. His harangue next tore to pieces, in his most slash- 
ing and merciless style, a wretched speech delivered by Wellesley Pole 
in the British House of Commons which described the Catholics as 



246 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

recently departing from their original moderate determination to confine 
themselves to petitioning and to avoid any breach of the Convention 
Act. Wellesley Pole complained that latterly the committee undertook 
to manage, not the Catholic petition, but Catholic affairs; that a com- 
mittee of grievances was appointed, which held weekly meetings ; that 
the forms of the House of Commons were imitated ; that this violence 
had alarmed the lords Fingal and Ffrench, and others of the more respect- 
able Catholics; that these gentlemen deemed the committee had exceeded 
their powers. He even asserted that the lords Fingal and Ffrench had 
seceded from the committee. 

O'Connell begins his onslaught on this speech by affecting to disbe- 
lieve in the genuineness of the report "contained in a paper bearing, 
with a constant contempt for truth, the sacred name of 'Patriot.' " He 
says : " I cannot bring myself to believe that any man could pronounce 
such a discourse. The style is of the poorest order, . . . and there are a 
thousand phrases in it which demonstrate that no man of common edu- 
cation could have composed it. But it would be absurd to waste time 
in censuring more of this composition; it is the absence of truth and 
decency which distinguishes it and entitles it to some notice amongst 
our calumnies. 

"Let me be pardoned whilst I delay you to expose its want of ve- 
racity. It is by calumny alone that our degradation is continued; if 
nothing were told of us falsely, if 'naught was set down against us in 
malice,' we should long since have been emancipated. My lord, I beg 
leave to confute these calumnies, not because they are talented or skilful, 
but simply to oppose the system of detraction." 

He takes six of Wellesley Pole's assertions and demolishes them. I 
shall give one or two passages: "It is also asserted, second, 'That Lord 
Ffrench, in consequence of the violence of the members of the com- 
mittee, seceded from them.' 

"When shall I find time to express my astonishment at this asser- 
tion? — an assertion directly, pointedly and positively the contrary of the 
fact. Mr. W. W. Pole could never have said any such thing. Why, 
Lord Ffrench was in the chair when Mr. Pole sent his police-justice to 
disperse that committee. Loi-cl Ffrench entered into a correspondence 
with Mr. Pole to maintain that committee. He lent his character, his 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 247 

rank and his talents to support that committee ; and, in perfect defiance 
of Mr. W. W. Pole, he did support it. What becomes of the audacious 
assertion of his secession ? 

"I wish my noble friend— for so I am proud to call him — were 
allowed by his health to be here this day: how he would refute this 
calumny ! He never seceded or deserted the Catholic cause ; and I can 
assure Mr. W. W. Pole that there breathes not the man who would pre- 
sume to tell his lordship that he seceded from the Catholic Committee 
or the Catholic rights. I know the reply which such presumption would 
meet and merit." 

O'Connell also denied the assertion "that the earl of Fingal had 
seceded." Lord Fingal, who was present, assented to O'Connell's denial. 
After touching on various other points of Wellesley Pole's speech, the 
orator proceeds thus : 

"Yes, this article illustrates the active genius of the speech. Un- 
founded assertion, ridiculous argument, paltry self-sufficiency and ludi- 
crous quotation. ... I have to apologize for attaching so much import- 
ance to matters so insignificant. 

" I hasten to conclude by expressing my conviction that the emanci- 
pation is certain, and will be immediate. The generous, the cordial 
support of our Protestant brethren, in Ireland, assures us of it. The 
petition — which is exclusively their measure, and with respect to which 
every Catholic has scrupulously avoided the least interference — the 
Protestant petition has, at this moment, more signatures to it than were 
affixed to any petition of our own. It has been supported in every 
county by the wealth, talent and rank of our affectionate countrymen, 
and I am proud to see amongst us this day, at the head of so many 
of our Protestant friends, a noble lord (G-lentworth) whose ardent 
patriotism entitles him to the gratitude of every class of his fellow- 
subjects." . . . 

"We have the Protestants of Ireland in our favor; the Protestants 
of England — at least the rational part of them — are not opposed to us. 
No, in the two last discussions in Parliament, the right and justice of 
our claims were conceded, even by those who opposed on the ground of 
the time. There was but one solitary exception — a single individual, 
Sir John Mchol, who was sent forward as the scapegoat of English 



248 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

bigotry, to revive ancient calumny and to add some fresh ones; he was 
installed in the enviable office of successor to Dr. Duigenan; but, good 
Lord ! he is quite unfit for the employment. There was about Duigenan 
a sturdy, robust, unblushing effrontery, that enabled him to assert any- 
thing, and prevented the possibility of his retreating. This poor Mchol, 
however, was no sooner attacked and ridiculed, at every tide, than he 
explained one passage, softened down another and gave up a third, until 
he himself abandoned, piecemeal, the web of intolerance, so that it 
really appears that even the fertile resource of bigoted calumny is at 
length exhausted. 

"Of the prince" (the worthless regent) "I shall say nothing — uncer- 
tainty as to present circumstances, reliance on the past, and the linger- 
ing and dutiful affection in a heart devoted to the friend of Ireland" 
(humbug!), "restrain me. To canvass the subject would appear to be the 
entertaining of a doubt. 

" Oh ! but there is one objection still remains to our emancipation ; it is 
quite novel and most important. Our enemies object to the tone which 
the Catholics use. This notable objection was struck out by the earl of 
Eosse. He disliked our tone. He might as well have quarrelled with 
our accent; but that would be rather a strong measure in Lord Rosse 
(laughter). Seriously, however, the descendant of Sir William Parsons 
has a hereditary right to be the enemy of the Catholics upon any pre- 
text, or even without one. I do not believe this lord has fallen into 
inconsistency. I have some faint recollection that, under the name of 
Sir Lawrence Parsons, he once enacted patriotism in Ireland. 1 may 
be mistaken, but I do not think he ever supported our claims ; and I 
am quite sure I wish he never may. 

" But our tone is disliked. Yes, my lord, they dislike the tone which 
men should use who are deeply anxious for the good of their country, 
and who have no other object. We are impressed with the sense of the 
perils that surround us, and of all the calamities impending on a <li\ ided 
and distracted people." (Here he alludes to the menacing might of Ndr 
poleon.) . . . 

" We, my lord, assume the tone which may terrify the invader ; we 
use the tone of men who appreciate the value of civil liberty, and who 
would die sooner than exchange it for the iron sway of military rule, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 24£ 

We talk as men should who dread slavery and disgrace, but laugh to 
Bcorn the idea of danger. Shall it be asked, if the invader arrived — 

"'And was there none — no Irish arm 
In whose veins the native blood runs warm? 
And was there no heart in the trampled land 
That spurn' d the oppressor's proud command? 
Could the wronged realm no arm supply 
But the abject tear and the slavish sigh'? 

Why yes, my lord, we are told if we had been servile and base in our 
language, and dastardly in our conduct, we should be nearer success ; 
that the 'slavish tear,' the 'abject sigh/ would have suited our dignity; 
that had we shown ourselves prone to servility and submission, and 
silent in oppression, we should advance our emancipation ; and that by 
proving, by our words and actions, that we deserve to be slaves, we 
should ensure liberty." 

I have quoted thus largely from this speech, because I think it an 
important one, especially from a biographical point of view. It gives 
striking specimens of O'ConneLVs peculiar views of public men and 
public policy. We see plainly his great anxiety to conciliate Protest- 
ants, his strong dislike of secret movements, his apparent disinclination 
to look to France for assistance, his sanguine readiness to promise his 
followers immediate success, even when success, as in the present 
instance, was problematical, cr, at least, remote. His tendency to bold 
personalities is also conspicuous. To notice a more trifling particular, 
we find him in this early speech using a quotation from Byron that was 
a favorite one with him in his latter days — "My bosom's lord sits lightly 
on his throne." With regard to his vehement denial of the possibility 
of secession on the part of his noble friends, in this he partially deceived 
either his auditory or himself, or both. Before long we shall see this 
secession actually taking place. In fact, the aristocratic members of 
the Catholic movement entertained a decided feeling of jealousy towards 
the popular section, and especially towards O'Connell and other aspiring 
young lawyers, who were gradually taking the leadership of the Catholic 
body out of their hands. In a meeting which had taken place nearly a 
year before the present one, Lord Ffrench had assailed the lawyers, 
describing them as "men who ought to be suspected, as having more to 



250 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

expect than any other description of Catholics;" and, with a view "to 
put down the lawyers" by an appeal to the people, on the same occasion 
he had moved "that the Catholic concerns be referred to an aggregate 
meeting to be held that day fortnight." O'Connell had replied, " That 
for his part he should be most grateful if the bar were altogether ex- 
cluded from Catholic politics. And if the noble lord could attend exclu- 
sively to the affairs of the Catholics he, for one, should rejoice at their 
being placed in such excellent hands. He (O'Connell) would then think 
himself justified in devoting himself exclusively to his professional pur- 
suits. He had no difficulty in calling on the all-seeing Deity to attest 
the truth of his assertion, that the conscientious discharge of duty to 
an afflicted country was his leading motive in coming forward. The 
committee, however, had done their duty well." O'Connell's speech 
then goes on to show the services rendered to the Catholic body by the 
committee, and to correct some misstatements of the Edinburgh Review. 
This celebrated periodical had, in a recent article on Irish politics, thus 
assailed the more popular section of the Catholic Committee: "The 
original managers of the Catholic cause were men of singular prudence 
and moderation — of high rank and acknowledged abilities. The distinc- 
tion they obtained by their judicious and well-concerted endeavors natu- 
rally excited the jealousy of some members of the body, who had not exactly 
the same qualifications ; and the very success which had crowned their 
efforts produced, in the most sanguine; and impetuous spirits, a degree 
of impatience at those slow and regulated movements, to which in real- 
ity they had been principally indebted for their success. In the crowded 
meetings of the Dublin Catholics, accordingly, there had recently arisen 
a set of rash, turbulent, ambitious or bigoted men, who evidently aimed 
at getting the management of this great cause, and, in some measure, 
the command of this great population, into their own hands, and em- 
ployed, for the attainment of this object, the common arts that are 
resorted to by all who arc more desirous of popularity than scrupulous 
about the means of procuring it. They flattered and inflamed their 
auditors by speaking in exaggerated terms of their wrongs, their num- 
bers and their power; and, mingling something like the language of 
intimidation with their arguments and remonstrances, affected a much 
wanner zeal for the rights of the body, and a much more lofty deter- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 251 

urination to bring the cause to a speedy issue, than had suited the cau- 
tious policy of their more experienced leaders. The success of these arts 
was neither to be wondered at, nor in common times very much to be 
dreaded. The assembled multitudes in Dublin might applaud the vehe- 
ment and bombastic harangues of a few ambitious counsellors and attor- 
neys, but the Catholic prelacy and aristocracy were likely to maintain a 
practical ascendency in the management of their common cause. In 
this crisis, however, the question of the veto was suddenly brought 
under public discussion, and the measure being furiously cried out 
against by those who trembled at the thought of a real conciliation, the 
cry was rashly taken up by the rash and sanguine, who spurned at the 
idea of compromise, and by the ambitious, who sought only for an 
opportunity to distinguish themselves. By their impetuosity and their 
clamors they confounded some and infected others, and, appearing by 
their noise and activity to be far more numerous than they actually 
were, they finally succeeded in intimidating the prelates themselves into 
an acquiescence in their absurd opposition." I may add that this review 
also contains a statement that the Catholics were excluded from not 
more than about forty offices besides the Houses of Parliament. 

O'Connell comments on these severe criticisms of the Edinburgh 
with unusual moderation. Upon the whole, he is grateful to the article 
for some good things it contains, in spite of the palpable hits against 
himself: "I see myself among those whom they style 'bombastic coun- 
sellors.' ... It is not in the nature of popular feeling to continue long 
in gratitude ; but I have no hesitation in saying that the Catholics of 
Ireland deserve to be slaves if they ever forget what they owe to the 
writers of that article." However, he maintains that they are deplora- 
bly ignorant of the condition of Ireland and the Irish. He says: "I 
am prepared to prove that there are twelve hundred and fifty-four 
offices from which the Catholics are excluded by the direct operation of 
the law, and thirty thousand places from which they are excluded by 
its consequences. , . . Catholics are excluded from the following offices : 
In Parliament, 900 ; in corporations, 3981 ; in the law, 1058 ; in the 
army, 9000; in the navy, 12,200; other offices, 2251 — amounting in 
the entire to 30,490. Catholics were excluded, in addition to all this, 
from the collection and management of the public money. ... In Eng- 



252 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

land there was no liberty of conscience for Irish Catholic officers. If 
they went to England with their regiments, they must violate their prin 
ciples or quit the service. Why did the pious Perceval and the holy 
"Wilberforce allow Popery in the German legion, and persecute it among 
the loyal Irish ? The committee were desirous that the hirelings whc 
did the dirty work of the "Wellesleys should dare to contradict the facts 
which his statement contained." 

0*Connell next glances at the jealousies and elements of disunion 
in the committee: "The old curse of the Catholics is, I fear, about to 
be renewed ; division, that made us what we are, is again to rear its 
standard amongst us. I recollect, in reading the life of 'the great 
duke of Ormond,' as he was called, I was forcibly struck with a 
despatch of his written about 1661, to vindicate himself from a charge 
of having given Catholics permission to hold a public meeting in Dublin. 
His answer is remarkable. He rejects with disdain the foul calumny 
of being a favorer of Papists, though he admits he gave them leave to 
meet; 'because,' said he, "l know by experience that the Irish Papists 
never met with* nit dividing and degrading themselves.' One hundred 
and fifty years have since elapsed, and we are still in thraldom, because 
no experience can, 1 fear, cure us of this wretched disposition to divide. 
I have already consumed too much of the time of the meeting; I shall 
therefore conclude by moving the order of the day, 'that the Catholic 
petition be forthwith presented to Parliament.' 1 am anxious to place 
that- out of the way of dissension. The cry of 'No petition!' was sup- 
posed, in the country, to be the watchword of party in Dublin. For- 
merly gentlemen talked for hours in praise of 'dignified silence/ and of 
'frowning upon their enemies.' and of 'muttering curses deep, not loud.' 
Now, indeed, their faces are decked with smiles; they are smoothing 
their whiskers and talking of delicacy; they entreat, with courtly air, 
that we would not embarrass our friends of the now administration." 

In this dispute we sec evidences of the growing dissensions between 
the Catholic aristocracy and the popular leaders of Ireland. The veto 
question end altered the misunderstanding. 1 so far agree with the 
remarks of the Edinburgh Review, as to think that the veto dispute 
helped to overthrow "the practical ascendency" of the Catholic aristoe- 
racv. But for his persistent and unbending opposition to the wefo, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 253 

O'Connell would, in all probability, have remained for years without 
attaining the boundless influence with his people which he so speedily 
reached. The reviewer, however, is himself most absurd in calling this 
opposition "absurd." O'Connell was perfectly right both on principle 
and as a matter of policy in resisting the veto, even though he may 
thereby have retarded the concession of emancipation. Grattan subse- 
quently, in brilliant, but bitter, language, accused him of having done 
so. Be that as it may, emancipation, clogged with the veto, would have 
been a questionable boon indeed; and if O'Connell, by his obstinate 
refusal to yield on this point, alienated from his side the illustrious 
Grattan, he might console himself by the fact that the profounder views 
of the equally illustrious Burke, on a project similar to that of the veto, 
coincided with his own. I have already quoted some remarks from 
"Burke's Letter to a Peer." I shall here give some additional sentences 
from the same epistle : 

"But allowing the present Castle finds itself fit to administer the 
government of a church which they solemnly forswear — and forswear 
with hard words and many evil epithets — yet they cannot ensure them- 
selves that a man like the late Lord Chesterfield will not succeed to them. 
This man, while he was duping the credulity of the Papists with fine 
words in private, and commending their good behavior during a rebellion 
in Great Britain — 1745 — was capable of urging penal laws against 
them in a speech from the throne, and stimulating with provocatives the 
wearied and half-exhausted bigotry of the then parliament of Ireland. 
Suppose an atheist playing the part of a bigot to be in power again in 
this country, do you believe he would faithfully and religiously admin- 
ister the trust of appointing pastors to a church which, wanting every 
other support, stands in tenfold need of ministers who will be dea,r 
to the people committed to their charge, and who will exercise a really 
paternal authority among them?" This letter, containing these and 
other equally forcible considerations, was republished on the occasion of 
the veto dispute, and produced a greater impression than any other of the 
numerous pamphlets that appeared on the question. 

Even if there had been no veto question, it is probable that misun- 
derstandings would have arisen between O'Connell and the aristocratic 
leaders of the Catholics. His bold, uncompromising policy and mode 



254 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELU 

of action, his vehement, outspoken, impassioned, denunciatory elo- 
quence, above all, his fierce antagonism to the Castle and its minions, 
were altogether at variance with their cautious and temporizing plans, 
their mild and conciliatory language, their bland demeanor and courtier- 
like relations to the members of the government. The sturdy tribune 
of the democracy, robust in body and mind, was ill associated with the 
pliable, smooth-tongued, superfine aristocrats, given to all sorts of finesse 
and intriguing ways. In short, the alliance was an unnatural one, and 
sure, in any event, to be speedily ruptured. 

There is nothing, for which O'Connell has been more condemned by 
many, than for the excessive license which he allowed his tongue. Yery 
few, if any, great orators, ancient or modern, have indulged so frequently 
in invective. It must be admitted that his severity was sometimes 
hardly justifiable, and that his ridicule frequently degenerated into 
downright scurrility and buffoonery. Still, upon the whole, I am in- 
clined to agree with those, who think that his readiness to lash unspar- 
ingly his opponents in the high places ought to be classed among his 
highest merits. At a time when the long thraldom of the penal laws 
had made crouching slaves of too many of his coreligionists, when the 
iron had sunk so deeply into their souls, it was well that they should 
have had one of their own race and creed — a sufferer under the same 
ban, a Catholic pleading for Catholics — free from all subserviency, at all 
times ready to brave the frown of power and fearlessly tell the tyrant 
and the tyrants' tool their villainy to their teeth. When the trampled 
Catholics saw their leader no respecter of persons, they learned to be 
independent. His defiance, and disdain, and fierceness at once roused 
their souls from the torpor of serfdom. Their hearts felt the throb of 
reviving manhood. What Catholic could hear the great Catholic advo- 
cate thundering forth his terrible denunciations against Attorney-General 
Saurin, in the memorable ease of Magec, which I shall shortly notice at 
great length, and feel himself any longer a slave? In short, generally 
speaking, in the most savage onslaughts of O'Connell. there is something 
to be found not unhealthy, and his broadest and coarsest buffoonery is 
redeemed by a certain genial humor and bonliommie. It should be 
remembered, too, that all really healthy, and manly, and earnest, and 
heroic ages are ages of free, broad, bold, unvarnished speech ; that, on 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 255 



the other hand, the ages in which measured, mincing, cautious, conven- 
tional delicacies of language prevail, are more than likely to be feeble, 
effeminate, faithless, cowardly and thoroughly vicious ages. 

Sometimes, when Dan would say something very broad and scurri- 
lous against some man of power, the people would laugh at him. It 
was most amusing then to hear Dan say, good-humoredly (his look on 
those occasions was always most comic), "I can't help it; it's a way 
I've got." After this the laughter would become twice as uproarious as 
before. This was the way he excused himself when his audience, at the 
Baltinglass repeal meeting, in '43, began to laugh at him for speaking 
of the earl of "Wicklow and his agent as "the pig Lord Wicklow and his 
agent, Bogtrotter Fenton." 

It is amusing, too, to find Dan at times speaking as if he wasn't at 
all aware that he had the slightest turn for abusing people. Thus, when 
pleading, in mitigation of punishment, on behalf of the notorious Watty 
Cox, in 1811, we find him uttering the following sentence apparently in 
perfect good faith : " The writer, when speaking of the abominable 
tyrant of France — I use the words of my client, in which, in his affi- 
davit, he describes the present ruler of that country. I would be under- 
stood as incapable of applying such phrases myself to any man." 

In May, 1811, it was proposed to exchange the militias of the two 
countries, so that the militia regiments of Ireland might be ordered to 
England, where the penal laws against Catholic military men were still 
in operation, and the regiments of Great Britain ordered to Ireland. 
An English writer says of this bill: "By means of this interchange of 
militia, a military force would be quartered in Ireland, not influenced by 
the local interests or prejudices of that country, which would be at hand 
to assist in the suppression of the disturbances that might arise from 
the disappointed hopes of the majority of the people, respecting their 
civil and religious privileges. If the policy of subjecting them be once 
established, the policy of interchanging the militia can no longer be 
called in question." O'Connell denounced this measure energetically. 
At an aggregate meeting in Fishamble street, on the 28th of May, he 
maintained that the bill was unconstitutional — contrary to the nature 
and intention of the militia service. " It was not a transfer which was 
proposed ; it was an annihilation of the Irish militia." An address, 



256 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

thanking hirn for his efforts, was sent to O'Connell from Dingle, in his 
native county: "We are particularly anxious to convey to you our de- 
cided approbation of the manliness, candor and perspicuity Avith which 
you have developed the tendency of the intended transfer of our militia, 
and displayed the machinations of those deluded men who style them- 
selves Orangemen and Purplemen. We request you to accept our most 
cordial thanks.'' Such was the address to our hero, signed by Edward 
Fitzgerald on behalf of "the clergy, gentlemen, magistrates and free- 
holders of Dingle." These strong expressions occur in the reply of 
O'Connell: "For my part, I hate the Inquisition as much as I do the 
Orange and Purple system, and for the same reason. The man who 
attempts to interfere between his fellow-man and his Deity is, to my 
mind, the most guilty of criminals." Irishmen of our own days would 
do well to take these enlightened sentiments of the "liberator" home 
to their heart of hearts, and treasure them up there, in order to guide 
themselves by their light in all dealings with their countrymen of 
religious persuasions differing from their own. 

It appears that Grattan thought the petition against the militia bill, 
adopted by the meeting, contained language which unfitted it for pre- 
sentation to the legislature. O'Connell, differing from him, said : " It 
was the opinion of Mr. Grattan that the petition was not, in its present 
form, presentable to the House of Commons, and to such an authority 
the highest respect was due. For myself, I have no hesitation in saying 
that I approve of the petition in its present form. I deny the assertion 
that it is a libel on the Protestants of England and Ireland. To them 
it has not the slightest nor the most remote application ; it is solely 
applicable to the bigoted proselytising system encouraged and acted on 
by the present administration." 

The committee saw no reason to alter the petition. However, they 
lost time in examining it. During the delay, the bill was hurried 
through Parliament and became law. 

On the 31st of May, 1811, Henry Grattan once more presented the 
Catholic petition to the English Parliament. On this occasion he pleaded 
for the rights and liberties of his Catholic countrymen with liis accus- 
tomed subtlety, power and splendor: "This is an occasion," said the 
veteran orator, "in which we are assembled to try the bulk of the popu- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 257 

Lation of Ireland." The testimony against them begins by alleging 
"that an immense body of Christians, subjects of this empire, are worse 
than any class or nation of idolaters — that they are not trustworthy in 
civil life. But if this charge be true, then it can be no less true that 
the Messiah has failed, that the Christian religion is not of divine origin, 
since its effect and operation have been to deprave and immoralize man- 
kind. . . . The qualifying oath ... a deist, an atheist may likewise 
take it. The Catholics are alone excepted ; and for what reason ? . . . 
If a deist be fit to sit in Parliament, it can hardly be urged that a 
Christian is unfit. If an atheist be competent to legislate for his coun- 
try, surely this privilege cannot be denied to the believer in the divinity 
of our Saviour. But let me ask you if you have forgotten what was the 
faith of your ancestors, or if you are prepared to assert that the men 
who procured your liberties are unfit to make your laws ? ... If our 
laws will battle against Providence, there can be no doubt of the issue 
of the conflict between the ordinances of God and the decrees of man. 
Transient must be the struggle, rapid the event. Let us suppose an 
extreme case, but applicable to the present point. Suppose the Thames 
were to inundate its banks, and, suddenly swelling, enter this House 
during our deliberations (an event which I greatly deprecate •■..), and 
a motion of adjournment being made, should be opposed, and an address 
to Providence moved, that it would be graciously pleased to turn back 
the overflow, and direct the waters into another channel. This, it will 
be said, would be absurd ; but consider whether you are acting upon a 
principle of greater intrinsic wisdom, when, after provoking the resent- 
ments, you arm and martialize the ambition of men, under the vain 
assurance that Providence will work a miracle in the constitution of 
human nature, and dispose it to pay injustice with affection, oppression 
with cordial support. This is, in fact, the true character of your expect- 
ations — nothing less than that the Author of the universe should sub- 
vert his laws to ratify your statutes, and disturb the settled course of 
nature to confirm the weak, the base expedients of man. What says 
the decalogue ? Honor thy father. "What says the penal law ? Take 
away his estate! Again, says the decalogue, do not steal. The law, 
on the contrary, proclaims you may rob a Catholic ! The great error 
of our policy is, that it presupposes that the original rights of our nature 



258 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

may be violated with impunity. . . . The duke of Cumberland, son of 
George the Second, would not allow a man to be recruited in Ireland, 
except, perhaps, a weaver from the North. And what was the conse- 
quence ? We met our own laws at Fontenoy. The victorious troops of 
England were stopped in their career of triumph by that Irish brigade 
which the folly of the penal laws had shut out from the ranks of the 
British army." 

O'Connell felt, and on various occasions expressed, the most generous 
admiration of the splendid eloquence and patriotism of Henry Grattan. 
"That greatest foe of Ireland," said he, "the late earl of Clare, honored 
Grattan with his hate ; and can we forget how a committee of the House 
of Lords turned itself, under Lord Clare, into a committee to assassinate 
Grattan's character, and with monstrous effrontery charged him with 
treason ? Had they believed it, not only their duty, but their inclina- 
tion, would have forced them, at that melancholy period when little 
evidence was necessary, to prosecute him even to death. Our country 
being entranced in the death-sleep of the union, I pity the Irishman who 
does not feel pleasure in repeating with me, that Henry Grattan is alone 
worthy to sound the trumpet of her resurrection." 

What a pity it was that neither Grattan, nor O'Connell himself, ever 
really committed what the English government call high treason! 

On the 14th of June, 1811. a curious and lively scene took place in 
the House of Commons. In a debate having reference to Irish distil- 
leries, Colonel Hutchinson, an Irish member, and one of the Donough- 
more family, irritated the English members beyond all patience by 
denouncing the act of union and English illiberality and selfishness. 
His speech and conduct in the House tended to rouse the sinking 
spirits of his countrymen. "While Great Britain," said he, "thankfully 
receives in her necessity the raw corn from Ireland, she would illiberally 
shut out the Irish spirits manufactured from that raw material. But, 
according to the principle of the union, there should be a free trade and 
no duties; or, if the trade was not free, the duties should be equal. 
When this principle operated against Ireland, it was carried out effect - 
ually, but when Ireland required that it should be likewise carried out 
against Scotland, Irish trade was interdicted, and the union violated. Ad- 
mitting, however, that the Irish distiller did reap some advantages from 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 259 

the Irish spirit trade with England, was she therefore to be deprived of 
the trade itself? If so, would they restore to Ireland all that she had 
lost by the degrading and abominable measure of the union ?" 

This rather strong language of the worthy colonel incontinently raised 
a hurricane in the alien House of Commons. Cries of "Order! order! 
Chair! chair!" resounded on all sides. 

The speaker of the House interposed and said: "The honorable 
member will do well to recollect that such is not the language which 
it becomes this House to hear or him to use, in speaking of a grave and 
solemn act of Parliament." 

An almost unanimous roar of "Hear! hear!" from the infuriated 
English members followed the speaker's delectable specimen of British 
jargon. "When at length there was a lull in the tumult, Colonel Hutch- 
inson said : 

"Sir, I trust I am incapable of using language unworthy of this 
place or of myself. In saying what I have said, I have obeyed the dic- 
tates of feelings of which I am not ashamed ; and while I know them 
to be just, I know not why I am to suffer the expression of them to be 
suppressed." 

"The collective wisdom" of England could not by any means con- 
trive to digest this plain and truthful way of putting the case. The 
colonel's truths were abhorrent to the souls of these magnanimous 
Britons. So "the hurly-burly" recommenced, and they relieved their 
outraged feelings by the sort of parliamentary howling usual on similar 
occasions. Cries of "Chair! chair! Order! order!" swelled from the 
throats of the disorderly mob louder and more fiercely than ever. The 
speaker resolved on contributing to the patriotic demonstration another 
slight instalment of British cant : 

" The honorable member will be pleased to see the necessity of con- 
forming to the usages of this House in the expression of his opinion." 

"Hear! hear! hear! hear!" yelled forth the several hundred 
throats of the collective wisdom of Great Britain ! 

"To conform," said stout Colonel Hutchinson, "to the usages of this 
House I am every way disposed ; but my right as a member is what I 
shall never resign." (Cries of " Order! order!") " If liberty of speech 
be not the right of every member of this House, I know not what is. I 



260 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 

have always considered it the right of every member of this House to 
declare boldly what he honestly feels. With respect to the measure of 
the union my feelings have been strong and uniform. I saw danger to 
this country in the measure when it was first proposed, and in that 
danger the degradation and ruin of my country. As the common friend 
of both, I resisted it by every means in my power ; and am I now to be 
denied the melancholy privilege of deploring the humiliating state to 
which that measure has reduced my country? Am I to be denied the 
right of complaining that she has been tricked out of her independence 
by promises which have been all violated and hopes that have been all 
blasted ? If, however, there be a secret determination to rob her gradu- 
ally of the few advantages to which, under the union, she may be enti- 
tled, let gentlemen avow this determination." 

And so this strange scene in that occasionally disreputable " bear- 
garden, ' the English House of Commons, came to an end. I must, how- 
ever, in candor admit that almost all large assemblies are, from time to 
time (that is, under the influence of exciting circumstances), liable to 
behave almost, if not altogether, as uproariously and viciously as the 
English House of Commons did on the occasion just referred to. I 
believe it is the Cardinal de Retz who says, that all large assemblies of 
men, no mailer what their rank or education may be, are apt occasion- 
ally to turn into mobs. 

An event of some importance to the whole British empire took place 
in London one evening in May, 1812. The "intolerant bigot," Perceval, 
as O'Connell called the prime minister, had just stepped from his car- 
riage, and was walking through the lobby of the House of Commons, 
when a lunatic, named Bellingham, fired at him with a pistol. In a few 
moments the minister was a corpse. "Where is the villain who tired ?" 
cried a voice expressive of intense agony. The cry was taken up by 
those all around. "I am the unfortunate man," said the assassin, 
quietly. "Who are you?" many voices exclaimed, while the crowd 
stood around astonished and horror-stricken. "My name is Bellingham. 
It is a private injury. I know what I have done. It was a denial of 
justice on the part of the government." The assassin, though a lunatic, 
suffered capital punishment. It is difficult to understand what the 
bigoted earl of Rosse, degenerate from what he was when famous as the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 2(31 

patriotic Sir Lawrence Parsons, could have possibly meant by saying, 
with reference to Perceval's murder, "You see, my lords, the consequence 
of agitating the question of Catholic emancipation." Between Catholic 
agitation and Bellingham's crime there was no earthly connection. 

O'Connell, in speaking on the subject of the "No- Popery" premier's 
murder, took the case of a peasant boy shot by an Orangeman, and 
placed it alongside "the causeless assassination which had deprived 
England of a prime minister." He asked his hearers, "Are all your 
feelings to be exhausted by the great? Have you no pity for the Irish 
widow who lost her boy, her hope? 'My child,' she said, 'was but 
seventeen. On Sunday morning he left me quite well, but he came 
home a corpse.' Are her feelings to be despised and trampled on ? Is 
the murderer to remain unpunished ? Oh yes, for Byrne was a Papist ; 
the assassin, Hall, an Orangeman; nay, a Purple marksman. You 
should recollect that his grace, the duke of Richmond, did not pardon 
Hall until after a patient trial. After that patient trial Hall had 
been convicted — convicted of having murdered in the public streets, 
and in the open day, with arms entrusted for the defence of the 
public peace, an innocent and unoffending youth. Hall has been par- 
doned and set at large. Is there no vengeance for the blood of the 
widow's son? The head of that government, which has allowed the 
blood of Byrne to flow unrequited, may have vindicated the notion of a 
Providential visitation for unpunished crime." 

Perceval was a narrow-minded and inveterate enemy to the Catholic 
claims. On hearing Grattan exclaim in the House of Commons, "The 
naked Irishman has a right to approach his God without a license from 
his king," O'Connell tells us, that on hearing this magnanimous senti- 
ment, "that contemptible little creature Perceval assumed rather the 
appearance of a convicted criminal receiving the just sentence of the 
law, than of a man placed at the head of the government of England." 
After his assassination a change or rather modification of the adminis- 
tration took place. This change, however, brought little increase of hope 
to the much-enduring Catholics of Ireland. Lord Liverpool was the 
new prime minister. Both Canning and Castlereagh had seats in the 
cabinet. Robert Peel, afterwards so famous as prime minister, became 
the chief secretary for Ireland. He was then only twenty-four years of 



262 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

age. He retained the Irish secretaryship for six years, during which 
period he carefully studied the character and wants of the Irish nation. 
Mr. Mitchel says: "Of all English statesmen in modern times, Sir 
Robert Peel may be said to have understood Ireland best — to Ireland's 
bitter cost." Towards the end of his life he affected a great desire to ame- 
liorate the condition of Ireland ; in the old ""plantation" style, however. 

Peel, though all through his career he was a bitter political oppo- 
nent and even enemy of O'Connell, had yet a high opinion of O'Connell's 
parliamentary abilities and eloquence. Long after 1812, the date we 
have arrived at, while the Reform Bill was under discussion, the merits 
of the harangues of the supporters and opponents of that measure were 
one day canvassed at Lady Beauchamp's. Our hero's name happening 
to turn up, some superfine, fastidious critic exclaimed, "Oh, a broguing 
Irish fellow ! who would listen to him? I always walk out of the House 
when he opens his lips." 

"Come, Peel," said old Lord Westmoreland, "let me hear your 
opinion." 

"My opinion, candidly, is," replied Sir Robert, "that if I wanted an 
efficient and eloquent advocate, I would readily give up all the other 
orators of whom we have been talking, provided I had with me this 
same 'broguing Irish fellow.'" No doubt the nice individual, who 
"always walked out of the House when Dan opened his lips," felt him- 
self "taken down pretty considerably." 

In 1812, O'Connell's robust style of eloquence had already given him 
high rank among the popular orators of his country. His language was 
seldom ambitious or ornate. Indeed, when he tried to introduce orna- 
ment he was not always happy. Occasionally, however, without appa- 
rent effort, the vigor and elevation of his ideas gave animation and beauty 
to his diction. He was clear in statement, admirable for powerful rea- 
soning, and prompt and adroit in reply; but when he "hurled his high 
and haughty defiance" at tyrants, and poured out his vials of burning 
wrath and scorn on their despicable tools, he was frequently magnificent 
Indeed, his invectives were sometimes terrible. I have admitted that 
he too often indulged in scurrilous personalities and intemperate abuse 
— eloquent Billingsgate, in short — unworthy of his great powers. In 
truth, though his heart was warm and good-natured, his disposition 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 263 

genial and jovial, his temper, on the other hand, was irritable as that 
of a poet. 

" His easy humor, blossoming 
Like the thousand flowers of spring" (Davis), 

redeemed and "covered a multitude of sins." His pathos, too, was 
genuine; as it came from the heart of the speaker, so it mastered the 
feelings of the audience with irresistible sway. His friend, Mr. Daunt, 
says: "Like his great countryman, Curran, he was unequal. He could 
soar to the loftiest heights of parliamentary debate, or talk down to the 
level of the lowest democratic audience." To me his parliamentary 
efforts, as a rule, seem much inferior to his popular harangues or his 
speeches at the bar. In the entire range of forensic oratory, if we 
except the speech of Demosthenes " On the Crown" (the masterpiece of 
human eloquence), there is no oration which surpasses, or perhaps even 
equals, in truth, scorn, defiance, boldness, vehemence and power, O'Con- 
nelFs wonderful defence of Magee. In rhetorical finish, indeed, it is 
surpassed by many. Eobustness was probably O'Connell's most striking 
characteristic as a speaker. His eloquent fellow-laborer Shiel remarked 
of him, " That he flung a brood of sturdy ideas upon the world, without 
a rag to cover them." The most singular feature of his intellect was 
the element of subtlety, or even a something approaching to craft, that 
was curiously blended with his massive strength and outspoken 
manhood.* 

* The principal authorities for the foregoing chapter are : " Life and Times of Daniel O'Con- 
nell," Dublin, J. Mullany, etc. ; " Mitchel's Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "The Select Speeche* 
of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ;" 
" Works of Edmund Burke ;" " Edinburgh Review ;" " Grattan's Speeches ;" Alison's " Europe ;" 
' Personal Recollectione of O'Connell," by Wm. J. O Neill Daunt ; Wise's " History of the Catholic 
Association," etc. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The Famous "Witchery" resolutions — Commotion and fury caused by them — O'Con- 
nell denounces the regent's violation of his pledges to the catholics — hls 
regret on account of lord moiras weakness — moira's nobleness in '98 ; he dis- 
appoints the expectations of the catholics in 1812 — o'connell tells the people 
to distrust the ministry, to trust themselves alone — apparent prospect of imme- 
diate emancipation in 1s12 — favorable votes in parliament — o'connell enume- 
RATES THE OPPORTUNITIES OF FREEDOM LET SLIP — CASTLEREAG H 's " HITCHES " — ABSURD 

arguments of the opponents of emancipation — chevalier mccarthy tries to get 
up a vote of confidence in the liverpool ministry, but fails — "liberty hall " 
— Sensational anecdote of the prince-regent's mistress, Lady Hertford — Gross 

PROFLIGACY OF THE REGENTS COURT — TlIE REGENT'S NAME HISSED AT A St. PATRICK '8 
DAY BANQUET IN LONDON; SlIERIDAN HISSED FOR TRYING TO DEFEND HIM — GENERAL 

election of 1812 — O'C'onnf.ll's legal penetration — His POWERFUL SPEECH ON THE 
elections — Enthusiastic popular admiration of "the Man of the People" — O'Con- 
nell praises the gallant lord cochrane and john pliilpot curran, and in- 
VEIGHS BITTERLY AGAINST LORD CaSTLEREAGH AND OTHER ENEMIES OF IRELAND — THE 
GAINS AND LOSSES OF THE ELECTION — CURRAN DEFEATED BY GENERAL NeEDHAM, THE 

Ascendency candidate, at Newry — A few recreant Catholics basely vote against 
Curran — Admirable speech of Curran — Lawless's vote of censure on those mem- 
bers of the Catholic Board who acted against Curran — Vote of censure fii.st 

CARRIED, AFTERWARDS QUALIFIED BY A MOTION OF Dr. DrOMGOOLE — POLITIC COURSE OF 
O'CONNELL — O'CONNELL'S SPEECH REPUDIATING ALL DESIGNS OF ESTABLISHING CATHOLIC 
ASCENDENCY. 



f#j|m ROBABLY this "No ropery" cry, which arose in 1812, had 

IP--'- keen stimulated by the celebrated "witchery" resolutions of the 

;;^|) preceding month, of which T shall now take some notice. I 

have already mentioned that the Prince of Wales, on becoming 

;y prince-regent, had shamefully broken his pledges to the Catholics. 

A strong manifestation of Catholic indignation at this breach of faith 

took place at a meeting held in Fishamble Street Theatre, on Thursday, 

June the 18th, 1812, Lord Fingal, as usual, being in the chair. Mr. 

Hussey informed this meeting how the gentlemen sent to London on the 

part of the Catholics were "bluntly refused" a private interview with 

the prince; hew Mr. Secretary Ryder told them that their address to his 

royal highness should be presented at one of his public levees, "in the 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 265 

usual way;" how those presenting it were only allowed to state its pur- 
port and origin ; and how it was handed over to a lord in waiting to be 
consigned to oblivion. 

The regent had expressed no opinion on the occasion of the present- 
ation; "but," added Mr. Hussey, "this melancholy fact is sufficiently 
understood, that his royal highness did not think fit to offer any recom- 
mendation to Parliament upon the subject; and it is notorious that the 
minister seemed to have acquired new zeal in propagating his old insin- 
uations against the Catholic people, and in repeating his old experiment 
against religious liberty." 

After Mr. Hussey' s address, certain resolutions, supposed to have 
been compiled by Counsellor Denis Scully, were brought forward by 
O'Connell, moved by Lord Killeen (the eldest son of the earl of Fingal), 
and seconded by Mr. Barnewall. I shall give some passages from these 
resolutions. The third says : " That from authentic documents now before 
us we learn with deep disappointment and anguish how cruelly the 
promised boon of Catholic freedom has been intercepted by the fatal 
witchery of an unworthy secret influence hostile to our fairest hopes, 
spurning alike the sanctions of public and private virtue, the demands 
of personal gratitude, and the sacred obligations of plighted honor." 
The Catholics also spoke of a certain "impure source," to which the 
disappointment of their hopes, their protracted servitude, the invasion 
of their right of petitioning, illegal state-prosecutions, all their imme- 
diate grievances, in short, could be traced. They expressed their just 
contempt for fickle courtiers or "the pompous patronage" of men who 
would sacrifice "at the shrine of perishable power" or to "the blandish- 
ments of a too luxurious court," the "feelings and interests of millions." 
They also expressed their resolution never to abandon the pursuit of 
"equal constitutional rights — unconditional, unstipulated, unpurchased 
by dishonor." 

These "witchery" resolutions were levelled against the influence, 
hostile to the Catholic cause, supposed to be exercised over her royal 
paramour by the marchioness of Hertford. This profligate woman was 
credited with having kept in power Perceval and his "No-Popery" col- 
leagues, when the prince became regent. These famous witchery reso- 
lutions created a tremendous sensation. The prince, of course, was 



266 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

furious, doubtless the lady herself was furious, the convivial viceroy, the 
duke of Richmond, was furious, the bigoted "No-Popery" partisans 
were furious. Even many timorous or deceitful friends or would-be 
patrons of the Catholics were displeased. 

After a zealous Protestant member of the committee, Counsellor 
Finlay (subsequently assistant-barrister for Roscommon), had delivered 
an able speech, O'Connell addressed the meeting. I shall give a few 
passages from this speech, commencing with the opening one : 

" I have, my lord, much to say, but I shall say little : I cannot ven- 
ture to detain you after my eloquent friend — after the brilliant display 
you have just witnessed of the talents and powerful eloquence of my 
learned and excellent friend, Mr. Finlay. We do, indeed, owe him much ; 
I was about to regret that he was not a Catholic, I was so pleased with 
him, and so anxious that we might have the credit of such talents; but 
when I consider, I think it better that matters should be as they are; 
for it must gratify every Catholic in Ireland to have Protestant talent 
such as his come forward to grace and support our assemblies ; and it 
i> a new source of unconquerable strength to our cause to have Protest- 
ant and Catholic equally ardent in the struggle in which we are engaged. 
His are talents which ministerial corruption could not purchase, for they 
are beyond all price." 

Mr. O'Connell next brings four of the faithless regent's pledges to 
the Catholics before the meeting : 1st. One made through the duke of 
Bedford. 2d. One made through Chancellor Ponsonby. 3d. A written 
one in the possession of the earl of Kenmare. He speaks thus of the 
fourth : 

" The fourth and last pledge, which, for the present, I shall mention, 
was that given by his royal highness to a noble lord"' (Fingal) "now- 
present. At the conversation I allude to, that noble lord was accom- 
panied by the late Lord Petre and the present Lord Clifdcn. After 
retiring from the presence of his royal highness, the declarations which 
he was so graciously pleased to make were, from a loyal and affection ale 
impulse of gratitude, committed to writing, and signed by the three noble 
lords." 

It is in this speech that the passage on Perceval's assassination, 
already quoted by me, occurs. In this speech, too, he speaks of the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 267 

once-popular Lord Moira. After saying that Perceval's death had 
"opened a near prospect of their emancipation," he proceeds: 

"At the moment I am speaking the bill for our relief would have 
been in its progress through the legislature ; we should have been eman- 
cipated this very session, unconditionally and completely emancipated, 
but for what ? — I speak it in no anger, but in the deepest sorrow — but 
for Lord Moira. • 

"Lord Moira is a name that I have never before pronounced without 
enthusiasm. I am quite aware of his high honor, his unbounded gene- 
rosity, his chivalrous spirit ; his heart has ever been without fear, his 
intentions have ever been, and will ever be, without reproach ; Ireland 
was justly proud of him ; where could his fellow be met with ? In the 
disastrous period that preceded the union — at the time that measure 
was in preparation ; when Foster and Clare banished Abercrombie from 
Ireland, because he was humane ; when murders marked the day, and 
the burning cottages of the peasantry illumined the darkness of the 
night ; when affright and desolation stalked through the land ; when it 
was a crime to love Ireland and death to defend her; at that awful 
moment, Moira, the good, the great Moira, threw himself between his 
country and her persecutors; he exposed their crimes; he denounced 
their horrors ; he proclaimed and proved their guilt ; and, although they 
were too powerful to be beaten down by him, he has left his country the 
sad consolation of beholding a perpetual record of the infamy of her 
oppressors. 

"Good God! if his advice had been taken in 1797, what innocent 
blood would have been spared ! how many cruel oppressors would have 
been punished ! and oh ! our country would still have a name and be a 
nation ! 

"Can these services be forgotten? can these virtues be unremem- 
bered ? No, never ; but still the truth must be told : this is Lord Moira 1 s 
administration. He it was that stood between some worthless minions 
and the people's hopes. He had to choose between them, and he has 
given his protection, not to Ireland or the Catholics, but to Lord Tar- 
mouth and his family. It is now confessed that a single word from 
Lord Moira would have dismissed the minions, and placed Earl Grey 
and Lord Grenville at the head of affairs. Why was not that fated 



268 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL 

word pronounced ? Alas ! I know not. Full sure, however, I am, that 
the intention which restrained it was pure and honorable ; but I, at the 
same time, feel its fatal effects. We are, my lord, to continue slaves, 
because Lord Moira indulged some chivalrous notions of courtly romance! 

"It maybe said that, as Lord Moira has interfered, the Catholics 
may reasonably expect some relief. Let us not be deceived. From the 
present ministry we cannot expect anything. . . . 

"But, in sober sadness, in whom are we to confide? Are we to 
believe the word of Castlereagh ? My lord, I would not believe his oath. 
Already has he been deeply pledged. He was a United Irishman, and, 
as such, must have taken their test, ... It pledged him to Catholic 
emancipation and parliamentary reform. . . . But how has he redeemed 
those pledges ? Why, he has emancipated the Catholics by duping some 
of them at the union, and uniformly voting upon every question against 
us; and he has reformed the parliament by selling it to the British min- 
ister. May this Walcheren minister be suitably rewarded in the execra- 
tion of his country ! and may he have engraved on his tomb for an 
epitaph, 

'"Vendidit hie auro patriam' (' J3e sold his country for gold') I 

"No, my lord, from us Castlereagh can obtain no confidence; nor 
can his colleague, Lord Sidmouth, expect that (he friends of toleration 
can confide in his promises. Lord Sidmouth, who declared to Parlia- 
ment that he would prefer the re-enactment of the penal code to the 
extension of one other privilege to the Catholics; Lord Sidmouth, who 
began his absurd career <>t persecution with the dissenters in England : 
that Lord Sidmouth (liberal and enlightened gentleman!) has been 
selected for the home department He it is who is to regulate the 
motions of our provincial government; he it is that is to cheer the 
drooping spirit of persecution in this country. His natural allies ;ne 
embodied here — the group of 'good men,' as they fantastically designate 
themselves, who manage the legal adminisrtation of this country; men 
who have worked themselves into reputation with ancient maidens ami 
dei nyed matrons by gravity of deportment and church-wardening piety, 
but who all their lives have been discounting religion and the Deity into 
promotion and the pay and plunder of office — those men. together with 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 26.9 

<mr friend, the solicitor-general" (Bushe), "have a suitable companion 
in Lord Sidmouth, and we should, instead of concessions, be prepared 
••ather to expect some other persecution, grounded, if possible, upon a 
pretext still more absurd than that 'pretence means purpose;' that 
assertion which I defy an honest man, however credulous, to believe. 

"From this ministry we expect nothing; let us be on our guard, and 
cautiously watch their progress. As Lord Moira has been their patron, 
they will endeavor to deceive him with a show of concession ; but their 
object is to give a change to the question. In its present shape it presses 
upon them with all the force of present expediency and all the weight 
of eternal justice. If they could entrap us into collateral discussions, 
if they could entangle us in the chicanery of arrangements and securities, 
the public attention would be distracted and turned from the principal 
object, time would be wasted in useless discussions, animosities would 
be created upon points of little real importance, and whilst the ministry 
practised the refinements of bigotry, they would give themselves credit 
for unbounded liberality. 

"These are not imaginary fears; the nature of the subject must 
convince any man that such was the design of an administration that 
had for its only recommendations intolerance and incapacity. 

" Indeed, the indiscretion of the party has already betrayed itself. 
It is not twenty-four hours since a friend of mine had occasion to con- 
verse with one of those right honorables who do. the business of the 
Castle, who are always as ready to pack juries as to obtain pardon for 
an assassin, or to write paragraphs in the Patriot. My friend said, 
'Why, you are going, I find, to emancipate the Catholics at length.' 
'We!' replied the other. 'Oh no; Canning's motion will entangle the 
rascals completely; we shall easily get rid of them without committing 
ourselves.' 

"Of these men, Lord Donoughmore has advised us to be distrustful. 
I beg leave to say more. Let us utterly disbelive them. It is impos- 
sible that they can do anything for us ; they would be false to them- 
selves if they were true to Ireland. But we are not without our 
resources ; we have them in ourselves ; we have them in the liberality 
of our Irish Protestant brethren ; we have them in the support of such 
men as the all-accomplished Vernon, son to the archbishop of York — as 



270 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONN'ELL. 

the honest and independent Robert Shaw. We have also a rich resource 
in the eternal ridicule with which bigotry has lately covered itself in the 
persons of its chosen apostles, Paddy Duigenan and Jack Giffard; but, 
above all, we are strong in the justice of our cause, and in the inextin- 
guishable right of man, in eveiy soil and climate, to unlimited liberty 
of conscience. Let us, however, expect nothing from the mere patronage 
of courts and ministers. The advice given by a noble advocate of ours, 
to other slaves, in a poem that it is impossible to read without debght, 
is not inapplicable to our situation : 

" ' Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not, 

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow — 
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought. 

Will Gaul or Muscovite redress you? — No. 

True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, 
But not for you will freedom's altars flame. 

Shades of the Helots ! triumph o'er your foe. 
Greece, change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; 
Thy glories all are o'er, but not thy years of shame.' " 

[This quotation from " Childe Harold" was a favorite one with O'Connell 
all through his life.) . . . 

" It is true that after common sense has overthrown every pretence 
that there is anything in the Catholic religion hostile to loyalty or lib- 
erty, another ground has been long since taken, and from time to time 
revived, by the unhappy dulness of one pedant or the other. It consists 
in an admission that the Catholic religion is quite innocent, and even 
laudable, in other countries, but that it acquires malignity from the soil 
on its transplantation into Ireland. In short, that other Papists are 
innocent or good, but that Irish Papists are execrable. 

"This precious doctrine has been dressed up anew, in sufficiently 
bad English, and published in a pamphlet called a ' Speech,' by that 

snug little Foster who represents Trinity College in Parliament 

I should fear it not" (the might of Napoleon) "if a system of conciliation 
and mutual tolerance were once adopted — if justice were distributed by the 
hand of confiding generosity — if the persecutions ceased, and that the per- 
secutors were removed — if Grey were prime minister, and Moira, then 
restored to the hearts of his countrymen" (according to Tom , there had 
been a time wher. the Irish might hoc< chosen Moira their king), "lord-lieu- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 27 L 

tenant. Every village would produce a regiment, and every field serve 
for a redoubt. The prince would then be safe and glorious" (humbug!), 
"and the country, combined in its strength, would laugh to scorn the 
power of every enemy. 

" This is a vision, but it might have been realized. And why has 
this prospect been closed? Why, to preserve the household! Oh, most 
degrading recollection ! My feelings overpower me ; I must be silent." 

I shall now give a few passages from a speech on Catholic emancipa- 
tion, delivered by our hero at an aggregate meeting held on the 2d of 
July, 1812. Lord Fingal, the chairman, commenced the proceedings by 
congratulating the meeting on the certainty of their ultimate triumph. 
He also observed that "the bringing of the Penal Code under notice 
was ensuring success to the Catholic cause, because it was impossible 
to consider its provisions without having the mind coerced to assent to 
its repeal." Mr. Randal McDonnell followed in the same strain, urging 
the necessity of ever-increasing exertion on the part of the Catholics to 
back up the efforts of their friends in Parliament. Our hero followed 
Mr. McDonnell, commencing with compliments to the secretary, Mr. 
Hay. O'Connell next made some remarks, which show that, to all ap- 
pearance (but the appearance was illusory), the Catholic cause was then 
just on the eve of triumphing : 

"We have to contemplate a novel scene: the Parliament of the 
United Kingdom, after nearly twelve years of neglect or rejection, has 
at length undertaken the consideration of our great cause. One branch 
of the legislature, by a triumphant majority, has resolved to investigate 
the Penal Code of Ireland, with a view to its repeal ; and perhaps before 
this hour a similar resolution has been adopted by the House of Lords. 

"The voice of the House of Commons is, at all events, certain. 
In it the Irish people have a distinct pledge that the question of their 
freedom is to be taken into consideration, for the purpose of final 
adjustment, at an early period of the next session. The House of Com- 
mons is unequivocally pledged to some measure of emancipation. 
The effect of this vote may perhaps be diminished when it is recol- 
lected that, during the present session, the same honorable House has 
more than once rejected all inquiry; but times are altered, and we 
have now arrived at what appears to be the first great step in the 



272 THE LJFE OF DANIEL OOONNELL. 

progress to complete religious liberty. The preliminary to emancipation 
is over, and emancipation itself, full and entire, is the natural, if not the 
necessary, consequence 

" I rejoice, my lord, at our victory — not as the conquest of one party 
over another, nor with the view to any triumph over any other denomi- 
nation of my countrymen, but because I look upon it as a victory ob- 
tained by the combined activity of all classes of Irishmen over their 
own prejudices, and over intolerance and illiberality. It is that species 
of victory that ought to endear the Irish Protestant to the Irish Catholic, 
because it has been obtained for the benefit of the latter, principally by 
the exertions of the former. It is doubly dear, because it holds out the 
prospect of mutual conciliation and mutual affection." 

He then says that, while he is ready, like Lord Fingal, to confide in 
the growing liberality of the British nation (and more fool he, with all 
his worldly wisdom, if he means what he says; and if he don't mean 
what he says, why does he say it?), he must at the same time "conjure 
the meeting to place its first and principal reliance in the determined 
spirit and unalterable resolution to persevere until emancipation shall 
be complete, never to relax their efforts until religious freedom is estab- 
lished." This is to the point; still more so the greater portion of his 
next sentences : 

"I may, without any allusion to its military import, which I dislike" 
[humbug /), "remind my countrymen of the advice of Cromwell to his 
soldiers. The night was wet, and they, as usual, were engaged in prayer. 
' Confide,' said he, 'in the Lord ; put all your trust and confidence in the 
Lord, but be quite sure to sleep upon your matchlocks? " [Laughter and 
html cheering.) The version of Cromwell's saying, in Colonel Stewart 
Blacker's spirited, though perverse, Orange ballad, "Oliver's Warning," 
is as follows : 

" Then put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry." 

O'Connell argues that their own history teaches them Cromwell's 
lesson: "Within the last twenty years," he says, "there were no less 
than three different periods at which the Catholics might have been 
emancipated, if a combination of exertion had been used. 

" Twenty years, however, have passed away, and we are still slaves. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 273 

My days, the blossom of my youth and the flower of mv manhood, have 
been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land — 
in the land of my sires — I am degraded without fault or crime, as an 
alien and an outcast. We do not, my lord, deserve this treatment. "We 
are stamped by the Creator with no inferiority ; and man is guilty of 
injustice when he deprives us of our just station in society. I despise 
him who can timidly and meanly acquiesce in the injustice. Oh, let us 
at length seize this opportunity of abolishing the oppression for ever." 

In '93, he tells them, they failed to secure complete emancipation, 
" simply because the Catholics were not sufficiently combined amongst 
themselves and sufficiently determined." 

At the period of the union, they were divided, too. I shall give the 
following passage in full : " We thought and acted differently upon this 
melancholy subject, and, amidst the bitter anguish which the memory 
of my extinguished country excites, I have consolations both personal 
and public. First, because the opposition to the union was [and I thank my 
God for it) the first act of my political life; and, secondly, I feel some com- 
fort that the Catholics did not barter the constitution of their native land 
for advantages to themselves. I blame no person for the failure of eman- 
cipation on that occasion; on the contrary, I proudly rejoice that the 
Catholics, even those of them who supported that baleful and degrading 
measure, despised any idea of trafficking upon, or profiting by, the 
miseries of Ireland. 

" My lord, all the Catholics are free from the guilt of having partici- 
pated in the sale of their country; and this benefit results, that they 
are bound by no contract to continue their thraldom. Nay, the exist- 
ence of the penal code is soothed by the recollection that, in the efforts made 
to procure redress, a popular spirit is roused, which, if not soon laid by the 
voice of emancipation, may generate a determination to reanimate the fallen 
constitution ! 

" The third and last period, at w T hich the Catholics might have been 
emancipated, occurred since I had the honor to be an humble laborer in 
the Catholic cause; it was the commencement of Mr. Fox's adminis- 
tration. . . . Mr. Scully was present as a delegate at those declarations, 
when Mr. Fox proclaimed the restrictive code as a crime — religious lib- 
erty as a right. ' I cannot,' said that enlightened man — ' I cannot con- 



274 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

sent to become your advocate, unless you are ready to concede to all other 
sects the toleration you require for yourselves.' 'We should be unwor- 
thy to obtain it, could we hesitate to accede to your terms ; we would 
gladly bestow upon all mankind what we ask for ourselves,' was the 
reply. 

"Upon this avowed principle, in 1805, Mr. Fox supported the claims 
of the Catholics; in 1806, that very Mr. Fox became minister. What 
could have prevented that principle from being carried into action?" 

O'Connell attributes the failure on this occasion to the "mistaken 
confidence of the Catholics," to "the unsuspecting credulity of the Irish 
heart." "The noble generosity of the Irish disposition could not bear 
to doubt where it entertained affection ; or perhaps the very novelty of 
the voice of kindness had its charms. The Irish had been so long used 
to obloquy and harshness, that they received as a boon, deserving of 
gratitude, the mere language of conciliation. The result was, that the 
favorable moment of compelling that administration either to emanci- 
pate or to resign, was passed by, and our servitude continues to this 
hour. 

"Let us profit by those lessens But shall we fail? Think 

you, are we to owe our freedom to Lord Castlcreagh and to Lord Sid- 
mouth? Lotus, my lord, beware of raising too high the expectations 
of the country. In such a people ;is the Irish the effects of disappoint- 
ment may be terrific. They arc too apt to believe that which they wish. 
They are too prone to rely; and when the hour of political treachery lias 
come, when the promised 'graces' are withdrawn from light, the sudden 
violence of disappointed expectation is not likely to be controlled by the 
influence of reason. Already we have seen the effects of blasting the 
hopes of the Irish people." After referring to the administration of 
Lord Fitzwilliam, the hopes then raised, and the dire consequences that 
followed from the disappointment of those hopes, he thus continues: 
" Let us spare our country from the horrid consequences of outraged 
feelings. This is the last resort of public liberty in Phirope, the only 
country where the sword alone, the tyrant's law, does not prevail. I, 
my lord, for one, am determined not to survive the representative sys- 
tem of government in this country. Surely we ought not to endanger 
it by rousing those angry passions which must result from betrayed con- 



THE LIFE OF D\N1EL O'CONNELL. 275 

fidence. We should warn the people not to believe overmuch those who 
are hackneyed in duplicity and treachery. 

" The opposition to Catholic emancipation has assumed a new shape ; 
bigotry and intolerance have been put to the blush or covered with ridicule ; 
everybody laughs at Jack Giffard and Paddy Duigenan, and their worthy 
compeer and colleague in England, Sir William Scott" [Lord Eldorts 
brother, afterwards Lord Stowell), "no longer ventures to meet with adverse 
front the justice of our cause. He may, indeed, talk of setting our ques- 
tion at rest — he may declaim upon the moral inferiority of the Irish Cath- 
olics ; but let him rest assured that so long as his children — if he have 
any — so long as the swarthy race of his Scotts, are placed by law on any 
superiority to the Irish Catholics, so long will it be impossible to put the 
question to rest. It never can, it never shall rest, save in unqualified, 
unconditional emancipation.',' 

Having indulged in a parting sarcasm at Scott for having, as judge 
of the admiralty court, decided "precisely the same question in two dif- 
ferent ways," he scouts the veto, the "arrangements," the "sanctions," 
the "securities," which, one after the other, British ministers talked 
of getting before conceding emancipation. He then proceeds in this 
style : " Having disposed of ' veto, arrangement, sanctions and securi- 
ties,' there remains but one resource for intolerance: the classic Castle- 
reagh has struck it out ; it consists in — what do you think ? Why, in 
'hitches!' Yes, 'hitches' is the elegant word which is now destined to 
protract our degradation. It is in vain that our advocates have in- 
creased ; in vain have our foes been converted ; in vain has William 
Wellesley Pole become our warm admirer. Oh, how beautiful he must 
have looked advocating the Catholic cause ! And his conversion, too, 
has been so satisfactory — he has accounted for it upon such philosophic 
principles ! Yes, he has gravely informed us that he was all his life a 
man detesting committees : you might see by him that the name of a 
committee discomposed his nerves and excited his most irritable feel- 
ings ; at the sound of a committee he was roused to madness. Now, 
the Catholics had insisted upon acting by a committee — the naughty 
Papists had used nothing but profane committees ; and, of course, he 
proclaimed his hostility. But in proportion as he disliked committees, 
so did he love and approve of aggregate meetings — respectable aggregate 



276 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXEl.L. 



meetings. Had there been a chamber at the Castle large enough for an 
aggregate meeting, lie won Id have given it. Who does not see that it is 
quite right to doat upon aggregate meetings and detest committees, by 
law, logic, philosophy and science of legislation? All recommend the 
one and condemn the other ; and at length the Catholics have had the 
good sense to call their committee a board, to make their aggregate 
meetings more frequent. They, therefore, deserve emancipation, and, with 
the blessing of God, he (Mr. Pole) would confer it on them ! (Laugh- 
ter and cheers.) 

"But, seriously, let us recollect that Wellesley Pole is the brother of 
one of our most excellent friends — of Marquis Wellesley. who has so 
gloriously exerted himself in our cause, who has manfully abandoned 
one administration because he could not procure our liberty, and re- 
jected power under any other unless formed on the basis of emancipa- 
tion, and who has, before this hour in which I speak, earned another 
unfading laurel and the eternal affection of the Irish people by his mo- 
tion in the House of Lords. . . . Lord Castlereagh, too, has declared 
in our favor, with the prudenl reserve of 'the hitches;' he is our 
friend, and has been so these last twenty years — onr secret friend ; us 
he says so upon hi* honor as a gentleman, we are bound to believe him. 
If it be a merit, in the minister of a great nation, to possess profound 
discretion, this merit Lord Castlereagh possesses in a supereminent 
degree. Why, he has preserved this secret with the utmost success. 
Who ever suspected that he had such a secret in his keeping? . . . 
admirah'.e contriver! most successful placeman! — most discreet 
and confidential of ministers! 

"But what are his 'hitches'? They constitute another ' secret.' I 
think, however, I understand them. In the morning papers of this day 
there appealed a call upon the Protestants of the county of Sligo to 
come forward in support of the establishment. It looks like the tocsin 
of intolerance; the name signed to it is John Irwin. ... If he be a 
hireling of the administration, and that this is the first demonstration 
of the 'hitches,' I proclaim his miserable attempt to the contempt of the 
enlightened Protestants of Ireland — its fate is certain. The government 
may give it a wretched importance, bul they never can afford it strength; 
they may give it -sanction,' 1 ml I hey cannot procure 'security' for big* 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 277 



otry. The Protestants, Presbyterians, and the Quakers of Ireland have 
too recently evinced the noble liberality of their sentiments — their sense 
of our wrongs, and their sympathy in the sufferings of their brethren, 
who are, in their turn, ready to die in their defence. The Irish Protest- 
ants of every denomination are too just and too wise to be duped into 
the yell of bigotry. The result of the attempt is certain. . . . 

"I said I understood Castlereagh's 'hitches,' and I proclaim this as 
one of them ; I know, too, we shall have new persecutions. . . . Believe 
me, my prophetic fears are not vain ; I know the managers well, and 
place no confidence in their holy seeming. Again, England affords an- 
other opportunity of extending the 'hitches, 7 under the pretence of 
making laws to prevent rebellion there; the administration will sus- 
pend the habeas corpus, for the purpose of crushing emancipation here. 
. . . The new laws occasioned by English rioters will pass harmless 
over their heads, and fall only upon you. . . . The 'hitches,' the 
'hitches' plainly mean all that can be raised of venal outcry against us, 
and all that can be enacted of arbitrary law, to prevent our discussions. 

" Still, still we have resources — we have rich resources in those affec- 
tionate sentiments of toleration which our Irish Protestant brethren 
have proudly exhibited during the present year. The Irish Protestants 
will not abandon or neglect their own work ; it is they who have placed 
us on our present elevation ; their support has rendered the common 
cause of our common country triumphant. Our oppressors, yielding an 
unwilling assent to the request of the Protestants of Ireland, may com- 
pensate themselves by abusing us in common ; they may style us agi- 
tators. Mr. Canning calls us 'agitators with ulterior views; but those 
Protestant agitators are the best friends to the security and peace of the 
country; and as to us, Popish agitators — for I own it, my lord, I am 
an agitator, and we solemnly promise to continue so, until the period of 
unqualified emancipation, until ' the simple repeal '■ — as to us, agitators 
among the Catholics, we are become too much accustomed to calumny 
to be terrified at it. But how have we deserved reproach and obloquy? 
How have we merited calumny ? . . . Let us rouse the Irish peoj)le, from 
one extreme to the other of the island, in this constitutional cause. 
Let the Catholic combine with the Protestant, and the Protestant with 
the Catholic, and one generous exertion sets every angry feeling at rest 



CHAPTER XII. 

Lord Aberdeen's question in the House of Lords — Meeting of the Catholics of Dublin at 
kllmainham o'conneix's oration, etc, etc. 

On the 31st of January, 1812. Lord Aberdeen had indignantly asked 
in the House of Lords: "After all the concessions that have been made 
to the Catholics, of what can they now complain? Their complaint is 
reduced to this — that they are still precluded from holding certain offices. 
Will their advocates contend that they can claim, as a matter of right, 
their admissibility to those offices? If that doctrine is set up, I for one 
do not hesitate to declare that it is not tenable." 

Lord Sidmouth had demanded : " Is not emancipation a religious 
question ? Is it not the duty of the House to protect the true religion, 
established by law? Must they not greatly detract from the estimation 
in which the true religion is held, if they so far countenance the mass 
as to put it on a level with the Established Church? if they allow it to 
be regarded as a matter of indifference whether persons go to mass, to 
church, or to the synagogue?" 

Castlereagh affected to dread that the power of the pope in Ireland 
would be used against the interests of the British empire. The pope 
was now a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon. Referring to this, Cas- 
tlereagh observed: "But, although it [the sec of Rome) had hitherto 
conducted itself in a way that no fault could be found with it, it did not 
follow that if a future pope should be absolutely nominated by Bona- 
parte, that the ecclesiastical influence of the Pope might not l>e very 
much abused in Ireland. This was a danger that should be guarded 
against; and in that case, without denying the pope to be their spirit- 
ual head I which was a main tenet of their religion), the correspondence 
between the bishops and the pope ought to be carried on in so open and 
undisguised a manner as not to give reasonable alarm to the state." 

Mi-. Tierney, in replying to Castlereagh. said, with greai readiness: 
"He could not imagine why an Irish bishop should not, in such a case, 
be dealt with like an English bishop, who would only lose his head." 

"On Thursday, the 5th of November, 1812, an aggregate meeting of 
the Catholics of the county of Dublin was held at Kilmainham, osten- 
sibly to petition Parliament, in reality to discuss the results of the elec- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 279 

tions just terminated, the conduct of particular persons in various 
localities during the struggle and the general state and prospect of the 
cause. William Gerald Baggott, of Castle Baggott, took the chair. The 
proceedings were commenced by Eandal McDonnell, Avho, after praising 
the conduct of the poorer classes of electors during the recent contest, 
introduced the resolutions that had been drawn up. Then arose, on 
every side, loud calls for "O'Connell! O'Connell!" The journals of the 
day tell us that, "after a short hesitation, the Man of the People came 
forward and spoke to the following effect. " 

But before I give a few extracts from O'Connell's oration on this oc- 
casion, I wish to observe, on the authority of John O'Connell, that the 
legal opinions delivered by his illustrious father in the Limerick speech, 
from which the passage, closing the last chapter, is an extract, "were 
all verified in the courts of law. The city of Limerick, from being a 
nomination borough, was, by means of legal decisions, thrown open to 
popular control, as Mr. O'Connell had pointed out. The expense was 
enormous, but was cheerfully borne by the patriotic citizens." A Mr. 
Edward Ryan and a Mr. Patrick Creagh subscribed, each, £500. O'Con- 
nell had roused the slumbering people of Limerick and pointed out the 
road to victory. The Verekers (the head of this family is Lord Gort) 
were, at the general election we are noticing, driven from the represent- 
ation of that city. It must be owned, however, that Thomas Spring 
Rice (afterwards chancellor of the exchequer and Lord Monteagle), the 
successful popular candidate, turned out in the long run no great acqui- 
sition. He was probably the first Irishman who nicknamed himself "a 
West Briton." 

But the reader and the populace are alike impatient to hear the 
opening of O'Connell's harangue. As a rule, you cannot measure the 
greatness of O'Connell by isolated extracts. The old saying, that you 
can judge of the strength and stature of Hercules from his foot (ex pedc 
Herculem), is not so often verified in O'Connell's case as in that of 
Grattan or Curran, etc. To see and comprehend the massiveness and 
might of O'Connell, you must review all his speeches, take his elo- 
quence in its totality. Then the giant towers aloft before your mind's 
eye. In the present instance, however, he commences with a noble 
burst of genuine Irish feeling and pathos that directly storms the heart: 



280 THE LTFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. 

" I could not be an Irishman, if I did not feel grateful, if I Avas not 
overpowered at the manner in which you have received me. Sorry, 
sunk and degraded as my country is, I still glory in the title of Irish- 
man." {Bursts of applause.) "Even to contend for Ireland's liberties is 
a delightful duty to me." [Enthusiastic 'plaudits.) "And if anything is 
Avanting, in addition to the evidence of such humble efforts as I haA 7 e 
already been engaged in, for the restoration of our freedom and inde- 
pendence, to evince my deA'otion to the cause of my country, I do SAvear, 
by the kindness you have shown me now, by any I haA'e ever expe- 
rienced at your hands, and by all that I hold valuable or Avorthy of 
desire, that my life is at her service." (Applause.) "And may the 
heavy hand of adversity tall down upon me, and upon all that are 
dearest to me — the children of my heart — if ever I forsake the pure 
pursuit of the liberty of Ireland." (Cheering for several minutes.) "Gen- 
tlemen, Ave are now arrived at a period when Ave are not only struggling 
for the interest of our OA\n religion, but for the liberty, security and peace 
of our Protestant brethren, both here and in England." (Applause.) 

"We are arrived at an important crisis, when a serious profession 
has been made, on our behalf, by the English Parliament. This is die 
first time that a declaration such as that to which I allude Avas ever 
made in the senate. It is the first time that the voice of religious lib- 
erty was really heard in the British Parliament; the firsl time that men 
were allowed to judge for themselves, and to obey the divine precept, of 
treating others as they themselves Avould Avish to be treated." (Hear! 
hear!) 

"The period is highly important, and calls for all the watchfulness, 
zeal and assiduity of which Ave are capable. An administration (formed, 
Heaven knows how!) have given us a specimen of their acting a neu- 
tral part toAvards us. They have promised that they shall not interpose 
their authority to interrupt the good intentions of any man. Some of 
them haA T e even pledged theinseh'es to support the Catholic question; 
and probably half of them have given some earnest of their improved 
liberality. I will, however, give them little credit for sincerity; 1 be- 
lieve they would not even pretend to lay much claim to our confidence; 
they have too much modesty to expect to be believed by us." (Laughiw 
and cries of Heart hear!) "We have, I believe, without paying much 



THE LIFE OF BANIEL O'CONNELL. 281 

attention to the professions of the cabinet, arrived at a most important 
crisis. It behooves every man of us to do his duty, and to take care 
that we shall lose none of the important acquisitions we have made. 
This very administration of whom I am speaking, notwithstanding all 
their fair promises, have been busily employed in throwing new imped- 
iments in our way since last session. But those impediments shall do 
us little injury, if we do our duty. They certainly are our natural ene- 
mies ; they hate liberty ; they have an inherent abhorrence of freedom ; 
and their hostility to us is particularly embittered by our contempt for 
them." [Loud applause.) "Yes, gentlemen, such are the men whom 
you, in your resolutions, have justly termed 'incompetent' and 'prof- 
ligate;' such are the men who now command the destinies of those 
realms, and probably the fortunes of Europe." (Hear! hear!) 

He next refers to a favorable change of sentiment towards the Cath- 
olic body on the part of the celebrated naval hero, Lord Cochrane, then 
one of the members for Westminster. The gallant Cochrane had been 
prejudiced against the Catholics on account of what he deemed the 
slavish doctrines of " the Eomish Church." O'Connell says : " It is 
some consolation, gentlemen, that there is some person who can assure 
ministers there is no danger in granting us emancipation — we are not 
too fond of liberty." (Laughter.) "But, gentlemen, see the consistency 
and rationality of our calumniators ! At one time they say we are agi- 
tating democrats, crying aloud for an unwarrantable portion of freedom ; 
the very next moment they turn round, and tell us that we have a marvel- 
lous propensity for slavery!" (Loud cries of Hear! hear!) . . . "Let 
Lord Cochrane recollect what the first Irishman that ever was born said 
at Newry." (Here the learned gentleman was interrupted for several min- 
utes by the acclamations of the assembly.) 

"I am not surprised," continued Mr. O'Connell when silence was 
again restored — "I am not surprised that you should feel the most 
ecstatic emotions of the Irish heart when I but allude to the name of 
John Philpot Curran." (Renewed cheering.) " It recalls to us everything 
that is dear or interesting in our history, it pronounces everything that 
we are proud to live with in this age, and everything that shall be esti- 
mable in the minds of posterity." (Loud applause.) "I know the 
name of John Philpot Curran has conducted you back involuntarily to 



282 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

that most awful era in our annals when we were deprived of our independ- 
ence, and metamorphosed into the colony of a people who were not and 
who are not in the least worthy of being our masters ! But, my friends, 
if we are true to ourselves — if Protestants and Catholics be alive to their 
commonest and most intimate interests — we may, profiting, among other 
aids, by the assistance of this very idol of ours to whom you have just 
paid your affectionate tribute, — we may, I say, become a kingdom once 
more!" [Thunders of applause.) 

" I had adverted to what my most venerated friend, John Philpot 
Curran, said at JNewry. I would take leave to remind Lord Cochrane 
of it, assuming it to be the expression of Catholic feeling. The Irish 
Cicero there observed that Englishmen love the privilege of being gov- 
erned by Englishmen. I would tell my Lord Cochrane that Irishmen 
fully as highly value the privilege of being governed by Irishmen." 
[Long -continued applause.) 

In the next paragraph, O'Connell has occasion to say: "In the 
course of my professional pursuits I have been one hundred times 
compelled to swear that I did not think it lawful to commit murder." 
(A laugh.) ..." But we are told we have predilections : we do not 
deny the charge. As for my part, I do not value the man who has 
not his predilections and resentments; but at the same time, Lord 
Cochrane may be as much afraid of our predilections for the grand 
lama of Tartary as for the Pope of Rome." (Hear I hear I) 

"Those imputations upon our value for an oath evince only the mis- 
erable ignorance of our opponents, with regard to our principles and 
uniform conduct. They bring to my recollection again, I he words of 
the great Curran al Newry, and serve to convince me still more of their 
entire justice, when he said 'that they are unlit to rule us, making laws, 
like boots and shoes for exportation, to tit us as they may.' " (Long- 
continued applaust . | 

After a few sentences in praise of the gallant Cochrane, O'Connell 
proceeds to review the gains and losses to the Catholic cause in the elec- 
tions. As much of the interest of this survey was necessarily of a tem- 
porary nature, I shall skim over the rest of the speech rapidly. Be 
complains that " Christopher Hely Hutchinson has hist his election in 
Cork." But in various other places additional supporters of the Cath- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 283 

olic cause have been returned. He is delighted that "in Downpatrick 
even John Wilson Croker" (the Quarterly reviewer, the Rigby — the man 
for "the dirty work" — of Disraeli's novel of "Coningsby") "of the 
admiralty, has, to use a northern phrase, been kicked out." [Laughter 
and cheers.) "I remember, about six years ago, when this gentleman 
and I were going circuit together, his Protestantism did not keep my 
Popery much in the background." [Laughter and cheers.) " If, however, 
he were not a Protestant, I verily believe he would have been doomed to 
drudge all his life at the bar, though he has been, since that time, in 
Parliament, and is now rewarded with a situation in the admiralty. . . . 
In Trinity College ... we have had an accession to our strength, in 
that credit to Ireland, that ornament to the bar and that honor to 
human intelligence, William Conyngham Plunket." [Loud applause.) 
In Dublin, "Jack Griffard, the police magistrates and Billy McAuley" 
could not get a man in opposition to Mr. Shaw. " The 'felonious rabble' 
of the corporation, if I may use the delicate expression of one of its 
members, had not courage to produce one person to oppose Henry 
Grattan, who 'watched Ireland's independence in its cradle, and fol- 
lowed it to its tomb.' . . . 

" Such is the state of the elections ; such is the state of your cause. 
Is it not demonstrative, that if you had a Protestant parliament in 
Ireland, they would emancipate you?" 

The reporters describe the manner in which this sentence was re- 
ceived by Mr. O'Conneii's auditory as having been enthusiastic in the 
extreme. The shouts of applause were taken up again and again, for 
many minutes, with unabated, or even increasing, fervor — in fact, "it 
was not for a long time that he was suffered to proceed." He then took 
occasion to say that the Catholics of Clare (destined also to glorify them- 
selves in 1829, at the Clare election, the most remarkable event con- 
nected with O'Connell's life) had covered themselves with eternal honor. 
He assailed Castlereagh, who was returned by a northern constituency, 
with infinite gusto : "In speaking of Lord Castlereagh, I do not know 
how to select words to adequately express my feelings. I should become 
an old man in foaming out the torrent of hatred and indignation with 
which my bosom teems. . . . Let the man who buried thousands of our 
brave troops in the marshes of Walcheren, and destroyed the springs of 



284 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

his country's liberty, know the feelings which are experienced by an 
Irishman when his name is mentioned." [Loud applause.) 

" To counterbalance the gloom that is thrown over the mind when the 
success of an enemy to the cause of Ireland is contemplated, I might 
exhibit the prospects that are presented by the residence of the young 
duke of Leinster amongst us." (Loud acclamations.) "Inheriting such 
a load of the virtues of his ancestry, his promises are great. Indeed, 
there is something in the name of Fitzgerald to cherish and console 
Ireland under the heaviest afflictions." (Loud applause.) . . . "As to 
the 'No Popery' agitators, we have leading them a Mr. Steward Cony, 
whoever he may be; a Mr. Owen Wynne, who is said to be a great en- 
couragerof fat pigs." (Much laughter.) "He is also, however, a brother 
to that important dignitary, the caterer-general of the Castle. Then we 
have a Mr. Counsellor Webber, who was an assistant-barrister" (assistant- 
barristers, a class of inferior judges, arc now called chairmen of counties), 
"or, in the words of the great Flood, who had availed himself of the 
'refuge for tried incapacity.' In one county, an obscure clergyman was 
tin' author of a pompous string of anti-Catholic resolutions. 

"But the hypocritical affectation of liberality in those gentlemen 
was worst of all!" (Ilea/-! hear!) "Catholics were their loving 
brothers! everything that was sweet and delightful and sublime am 
affectionate!!" (Laughter.) "They love us — oh how dearly !- but they 
desire us to continue slaves! They desire us to fight lor them and to pay 
the taxes; — but they keep the rewards to themselves!" 

At the same time O'Connell took good care, while denouncing what 
he called "the disgraceful efforts" of a "disgraceful no-Popery faction" 
in the counties oi Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Longford, to contrast 
with them "that formidable and imposing document, the Protestant peti- 
tion, signed by every one of wealth, respectability or talent that was to 
be found throughout the country." 

Alter descanting, at some length, upon the necessity of unanimity of 
sentiment among all classes at the awful crisis now impending (mean- 
ing, 1 presume, the final struggle with Napoleon the Great), O'Connell 
said, "It would be much wiser lor ministers, at this juncture, to enter into 
a treaty of amity with the Catholics of Ireland, than to lavish a subsidy 
of eighty thousand pounds upon Bernadotte" (the French marshal who had 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 285 

been elected croivn-prince of Sweden, and who was now turning against h is 
old master, Napoleon, in his sinking fortunes), than to build hopes upon 
the insurrection in Paris, form alliances with a chieftain in South Amer- 
ica, or conclude arrangements with the dey of Algiers." Mr. O'Connell 
sat down amid loud acclamations. 

At this general election of 1812, John Philpot Curran stood for 
Newry. Many of his friends had long desired to see him in the English 
Parliament. They did not consider his fame firmly enough established 
in England. A few orations, on great occasions, in the House of Com- 
mons, would root it deep as an oak tree, even in that alien soil. For 
himself, he wished chiefly to be able to aid Grattan in pushing the Cath- 
olic claims. In obedience, then, to a requisition from JSTewry, he con- 
tested that borough with General JSTeedham, a member, I presume, of 
the bigoted house, which owns the neighboring earl of Kilmorey as its 
head, probably an Irishman by birth, though Curran calls him "a gen- 
tleman of another country" (perhaps meaning in feeling); at all events, 
distinguished for having slaughtered Irish rebels in '98. In this con- 
test (shameful to relate!) Curran was defeated. A miserable Catholic 
merchant (still more shameful to relate!) seconded General Needham. 

On Tuesday, the 15th of the same month, at an aggregate meeting 
in Fishamble Street Theatre, resolutions were passed bearing reference 
to the preparation and presentation of the Catholic petition to both 
Houses during the next session, also to the preparation of an address to 
Mr. Hely Hutchinson, who had lost his election at Cork, expressive of 
Catholic feeling towards him. In addition to these, other strongly- 
worded resolutions contradicted certain allegations, in recent addresses 
of the grand-juries of the city of Dublin and other places, containing 
various charges against the Catholics, especially that of aiming at the 
establishment of a Catholic ascendency. Next, thanks were voted to 
Sheriff Harty, for his conduct in office, and, according to the usual 
custom of Catholic meetings in those days, to the Protestants who had 
attended — in particular to Counsellors Finlay and Walsh for their 



286 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

speeches. It was when the resolution referring to Mr. Hutchinson was 
put from the chair that a loud and general call for O'Connell arose. On 
his presenting himself to the meeting, he was saluted with enthusiastic 
acclamations that lasted for several minutes. Silence being restored, he 
spoke at considerable length on the recent exhibitions of the enemies 
of the Catholic cause. He held up to ridicule the insignificant John 
Earl of Aldborough, and lashed the mendacious London Courier. From 
this speech I shall only call attention to one or two passages : 

" But their absurdities shall not be the ground on which we shall 
defend ourselves. The accusation" [of seeking Catholic ascendency) "is 
contrary to our feelings — to our opinions; we have already expressed 
our disapprobation of any connection subsisting between government and 
the Catholic prelates ; and I am free to say, that there is no event which 
I should consider more fatal to the liberties of Ireland than what they 
have called a Catholic ascendency. Our prelates would no longer be the 
respectable characters in which we now revere everything that is vir- 
tuous or respectable; they would, at least, have more temptations to 
become otherwise; and whenever they should degenerate into the t<><>/s of 
the minister, then should I consider the doom of Ireland as sealed for ever." 

In this speech he also reminds his hearers of the pledges made to 
the Catholics by the last Parliament, and suggests the danger which 
might result from their violation. He says: "Let them" (tht members 
of the legislature) "recollect the terrible confusion that ensued when a 
former pledge was revoked." This refers to the pledge given by the 
viceroy, Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795, which pledge was left unredeemed 
when Pitt recalled that nobleman. O'Connell fortifies his views with 
the authority of the now bigoted anti-Catholic Lord Ross, who, during 
his earlier career as the patriotic Sir Lawrence Parsons, had said, in 
179o, in the Irish House of Commons, "that if a resistance to anything 
would be productive of evil consequences, it was that against the wishes 
oi the people, and the prospects which have been held out to them ; that 
if the demon of darkness should come from the infernal regions upon 
earth, and throw a firebrand among the people, he could not do more to 
promote mischief." After quoting this passage. O'Connell adds: "I 
hope some one will remind him of this part of his speech at the Kings 
county meeting, which I hear he is to attend to-morrow. He continues, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 287 



'he had never heard of a parallel to the infatuation of the minister' 
(he may see one now) ; ' and if he persisted, every man must have five 
or six dragoons in his house.' 

"And it was true; for in many houses it was necessary for the 
owners to have five or six dragoons, and the whole country was thrown 
into confusion. I hope and trust that no such consequences will ever 
again occur, though sure I am that such is the desire of the British min- 
ister. He wishes (to make use of the words of Christopher Hely Hutch- 
inson) that you should draw the sword, to afford him an opportunity of 
throiuing away the scabbard. Certain I am, that at this very moment 
there is a foul conspiracy to draw the warm-hearted, but unthinking, 
people of Ireland into a sham plot, to give an opportunity of wreaking 
vengeance on her dearest sons." He then warns them to shun all 
temptation to join in disturbances. The speech was frequently inter- 
rupted by vehement cheering. 

Passing by a speech delivered by O'Connell on the 13th of Febru- 
ary, 1813, in reference to the conduct of the English Catholics, and more 
particularly of one of their agents, named Charles Butler, a strenuous 
advocate of the veto, whose unauthorized interference in Irish Catholic 
affairs, hostility to the Irish Board, and desire to transfer the direction 
of the emancipation movement from the hands of the Irish to those of 
the English Catholics, who were jealous of the former, had naturally 
provoked our hero, I shall end this chapter with a few passages, chiefly 
of a humorous character, from his speech addressed, on the 8th of May, 
1813, to the Catholic Board on the subject of "No Popery petitions." 
The petition styled that of the "freeholders, freemen and inhabitants 
of the city of Dublin," presented with ludicrous pomp and ceremony, 
contained an immense number of forged and fictitious names of the 
most absurd kind. O'Connell desired that this fact should be brought 
under the notice of the imperial Parliament. Before analyzing the 
fraudulent signatures, he speaks eloquently of the wrongs and calumnies 
suffered by the Catholics of Ireland : "It was not," says he, " in the field 
of battle that our liberties were cloven down." [Hear! hear!) "No! 
Our ancestors, when they fought, if they did not advance as victors, sur- 
rendered upon the faith of an honorable capitulation; but that faith 
was violated, and its violation was justified by calumny !" (Hear! hear! 



288 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

hear!) "The Catholics were accused of entertaining opinions which the}' 
have ever detested — of adopting positions and principles which they 
have ever abhorred. Charges were brought forward and repeated against 
them, which could be aptly contradicted only in the broad vulgarity of 
Lord Ellenborough's language — ' Charges false as hell !' " 

But it is to the more humorous portions of this speech that I wish 
especially to call the reader's attention. After saying that " The Prot- 
estants of Ireland petitioned last year on our behalf; the wealth, the 
worth, the talent of the Irish Protestants — everything that was noble, 
and dignified, and intelligent, and independent amongst our Protestant 
brethren united in that petition"-*— after other remarks of the same tend- 
ency, he commences an enumeration of the bond fide "No-Popery" sig- 
natures by saying, " It was a matter, therefore, of much curiosity to 
discover who the two thousand eight hundred 'freemen, freeholders and 
inhabitants of Dublin' could possibly be." Having given an analysis 
of "the entire catalogue of genuine signatures," he proceeds, thus: 

"But there will remain near two thousand signatures to be still 
accounted for — near two thousand signatures will remain, for whom no 
owner can be found." (Hun-! Inn,-'.) " Of these there are some hun- 
dreds which purport to belong to individuals who have indignantly dis- 
claimed them. There are, in short, some hundreds of forgeries. Need 
we give a more striking instance than that of Mr. Stephens? lie dis- 
covered that his name had been forged to this petition, and immediately 
wmte to the mayor to inform him of the circumstance. The mayor did 
not condescend to give any reply, but took the known forgery to England, 
and presented it to the House as genuine." [Hear! hear!) "When for- 
gery was exhausted, mere fiction was resulted to. There was danger in 
giving names which, being in common use, might be disavowed by indi- 
viduals bearing them. The fabricators of this petition set disavowal at 
deliance; they produced names which no man ever bore or will bear 
[Hear! /tear!); they invented John Hedpath, and coupled him with 
John Bidpath; they attached James Hedpath to James Ridpath; they 
united the nohle families of the Feddlies to the illustrious race of Fid- 
dlies; they created the Jonneybones, and added the McCoobene to the 
Muldongs; to the uncleanly Rottens is annexed the musical name 
of Navasora; the Sours and the Soars, the Dandys and the 1'ea- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 289 



kens : the Gilbasleys and the Werrillas ; five Ladds and five Palks ; the 
Leups and the Zealthams ; the Huzies and the Hozies ; the Sparlings 
and the Sporlings ; the Fitzgetts and the Fibgetts ; the Hoffins and the 
Phantons; and the Giritrows, and the Hockleys, and the Breakleys; the 
Enssinghams, and the Favuses, and the Sellhews, and the Mograts and 
Calyells — all, poor innocents, are made to combine against us, and to 
chime with the Pitharns and Paddams, the Chimnicks, and Rimnicks, 
and Clumnicks, and the Rowings and Riotters. They threw in the 
vulgar Bawns, and, after a multitude of fantastic denominations, they 
concluded with Zachariah Diamond." [Great laughter.) 

"In short, a more tasteless group of imaginary beings was never 
conjured up by the delusions of magic. To the tune of ' Jonny Arm- 
strong,' they gave us five-and-twenty Armstrongs, and placed eighteen 
Taylors on the list. It ought to have been ' four-and-twenty tailors, all 
in a row;' there would have been some pleasantry in it. In short, by 
these means, by the force of mere invention, upwards of one thousand 
names have been added to this petition, and one thousand children of 
the brain of those worthy managers of intolerance appeared in formid- 
able array against us at the bar of the House of Commons, covered with 
the mantle of the mayor for swaddling-clothes." [Laughter.) . . . 

" To impose upon that House" (of Commons) "is, I presume, a breach 
of its privileges." (Hear!) "Let us demand inquiry and investigation. 
Our assertion will be, that two-thirds of the signatures to this petition 
were forged or simply fictitious. But we will not require an assertion to 
be credited without proof; we will challenge inquiry; we will show five 
hundred names without an owner; and we will then point out the 
fabricators of this mean and dishonorable scheme to retard the progress 
of emancipation. 

"If we are mistaken, our enemies can easily confute us; they have 
only to produce the individual. Mr. Riotter may head their party. I 
should be glad to see the gentleman. If he does not live in the city — 
this Riotter — I presume he is to be found in the liberties. After him, 
our enemies can show off Mr. Wevilla, hand-in-hand with Mr. Navasora; 
and Johnny Bones, Esq., may appear with Fibgetts, Gent. ; and even 
Mr. Knowing can be summoned to come forward in company with Mr. 
Dandy." (Cheers and laughter.) 



290 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 



" But why should I fatigue with the ridiculous catalogue ? If those 
men exist — pardon ray supposition — if they exist, they live for our ene- 
mies ; if they do not exist, then what is to become, in public estimation, 
of those our enemies — of those worthy allies of the traducers of her 
royal highness? [Caroline, the slighted and accused wife, of the prince- 
regent, of tvhose cause O'Connell was a champion.) Perhaps their spirit 
of loyalty may save them in Parliament from punishment, but their 
fraud and forgery will consign them to the execration and contempt of 
posterity." 0"Connell concluded, amid great cheering, by moving the 
following resolution : 

"Resolved, That a sub-committee of twenty-one members be ap- 
pointed to take into consideration the most proper method of investi- 
gating and respectfully submitting to Parliament the alleged forged and 
fictitious signatures to the petition against the Catholic claims, presented 
to the Ilouse of Commons by the lord-mayor of Dublin." This resolu- 
tion, seconded by the wealthy Major Bryan of Jenkinstown, county 
Kilkenny, was agreed to unanimously. Another resolution was added : 
" Resolved^ That the committee be directed to request the aid of such 
of our Protestant brethren as may be pleased to assist in accomplishing 
the object of their report."* 

* The books to which I am indebted tor the materials of the foregoing chapter are, " The Select 
Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his son, John O'Con- 
nell, Es(|.;" "Lite and Times of Daniel O'Connell, etc., Dublin, J. Mullauy, 1 Parliament street;" 
"History «f Ireland," by John Mitchel ; "The Speeches of the Right Honorable John Phil pot 
C'urran, edited, with Memoirs and Historical Notices, b) Thomas Davis, Esq.;" " Memoirs of the 
Times of George the Fourth;" "Cobbett's Register;" Moore's "Memoirs of R. B. Sheridan." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Slow progress op the cause of emancipation — Napoleon's approaching downfall— 
England's prosperity Ireland's bane — Grattan's bill and Canning's clauses — 
Failure of the bill — Its repudiation by the majority of the Irish Catholics — 
Vote of thanks to the Irish prelates — The aristocratic section of the Irish 
Catholics opposed to the vote; Counsellor Bellew and his brother Sir Edward 
— Corruption of the former — O'Connell "demolishes" his antagonists — Misunder- 
standing between O'Connell and Lord Fingal on the subject of the regent's 
pledge — O'Connell ridicules Lord Kenyon — Enthusiastic reception of Dr. Mil- 
ner's name at a Catholic meeting in Dublin — The English Catholics generally 
in favor of the veto — o'connell champions the cause of caroline, princess of 
Wales — His noble sentiments on the subject of repeal— He lashes the Orange- 
men — Ludicrous instance of English calumny against Ireland — Profligacy of the 

JURY SYSTEM — ADDRESS TO HENRY GrATTAN — O'CONNELL TRIES TO GET UP A MOVEMENT 
FOR THE PROMOTION OF IRISH MANUFACTURES — BRINGS FORWARD A VOTE OF THANKS TO 

the Presbyterian Synod — His spirit of tolerance — Lord Whitworth succeeds 
Richmond — Meetings and dissensions in Cork — O'Connell chaired — English insults 
to Dr. Milner — Death of .Lieutenant O'Connell — More of the veto question — 
Presentation of plate voted to O'Connell; Mr. Finlay's address — O'Connell 
creates a sensation by going to a Bible meeting — Baron Fletcher's charge ro 
the grand-jury of the county Wexford — Proposed application for sympathy to 
the Spanish Cortes — O'Connell's opinion of Maynooth — An American privateer 
off Dublin — O'Connell's great professional success — The parson and the girl 
who sold the curious eggs. 

^WAVING told the story of O'Connell's rise to forensic fame and 
political leadership at considerable length, having also given a 
profusion of specimens of his eloquence both at public meet- 
ings and at the bar, I shall condense the events of his life 
during several years following Magee's trial — in the course of which 
the Catholic cause, owing to many unfavorable circumstances, made little 
progress — into a comparatively small compass. I shall pass over with 
but slight notice many powerful speeches of O'Connell, full of deep 
interest for the minute student of his biography and of Irish history, in 
which he displayed at least as much ability as he did in most of those to 
which the reader's attention has been already called. As I proceed in 
my narrative, the causes of the slow progress of Catholic emancipation 
will be made manifest. Perhaps not the least of these was the reviving 




2V2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

power of England. The imperial star of the great Napoleon was now 
fast falling from the heavens. He had lost in the year 1812 a mighty 
army amid the snows of Russia. In 1813 another splendid host, after 
the most brilliant efforts and tremendous victories, had been shattered 
and all but annihilated during the closing months of the campaign 
especially in the gigantic struggle at Leipzig. Everywhere the French 
eagles were being driven back on old France. The old Castilian fierce- 
ness against invaders was in a blaze. Already the bones of near five hun- 
dred thousand Frenchmen were whitening on the hills of Spain. In all 
quarters disaster was making dim the lustre of French renown. England 
was at the head of the victorious coalition of the uprisen powers of 
Europe. "England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity.'! Eng- 
land's prosperity and glory are invariably Ireland's ignominy and banc! 

It is necessary, however, that I should first give a rapid review of 
several other events that tilled the year 1813 besides the Btate-prosecu- 
tions noticed in the last chapter. Of these the most important was the 
ii)ti'"luction into Parliament of (I rattan's relief bill. It was a very im- 
perfect measure. Catholics, indeed, were to sit in Parliament, to possess 
corporate rights and to be eligible for civil and military offices. Cath- 
olics, however, were not to be eligible for the offices of lord-lieutenant 
or lord-chancellor. But the bill was worse than imperfect; it was insult- 
ing to Catholics. As a security to the Protestants, the Catholics were 
to swallow a new comprehensive oath abjuring the alleged power of the 
pope to depose or put to death monarchs, abjuring obedience lo his 
temporal power, the infallibility of the pope as an article of faith, and 
the principle that no faith should be kept with heretics. They were 
further to swear that they would support the Protestant succession, and 
the existing state of property; that they would discover all treasons 
within their cognizance; thai they would not attempt to injure the 
state or overthrow the Protestant Church ; that, unless they were con- 
vinced of his loyalty, they (laymen and clergy) would not nominate or 
elect any Catholic bishop or vicar apostolic. 

But even this was not the worst. In addition to the security of the 
oath, certain clauses, suggested by Sir John Bippesley, that inveterate 
stickler for the veto, were proposed by Canning and Castlereagh. These 
are known as "the Canning clauses." Five commissioners were to con- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CONN ELL. 293 



stitute a board to examine into and certify to the loyalty of all candi- 
dates for bishoprics. The same commissioners, together with two Roman 
Catholic bishops, the lord-chancellor and one of the secretaries of state, 
were to exercise surveillance over all bulls or briefs received from Rome, 
with the proviso that they should not betray the secrets of the Catholic 
Church. When at last an amendment was proposed, striking out the 
clause that gave the Catholics the privilege of sitting and voting in 
Parliament, the bill was withdrawn and finally lost. (See, for fuller 
particulars, Grattan's speech, May 11, 1813.) 

While this bill was in progress, Grattan advocated it with his usual 
power. But all his eloquence failed to recommend it to his countrymen. 
The Irish Catholics were thrown into the greatest commotion. Clergy 
and people, almost unanimously, rejected emancipation on such teims. 
The insidious "Canning clauses," the tendency of which was to subject 
the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to state control, kindled especial indig- 
nation. The aristocratic section, indeed, of the Irish Catholics were 
favorable to the bill. Lord Trimleston bewailed its loss. I may also 
observe that "the English Catholics" (to use the words of Mr. Mitchel), 
"not having any national interest at stake in the matter, were quite 
favorable to the project, and used their utmost endeavors to have it 
accepted at Rome, and recommended from thence. English influence 
was then very strong at Rome. The pope was a prisoner in France; 
and it was to the coalition of European sovereigns against Bonaparte 
that the court of Rome looked for its re-establishment." We shall 
presently see a strange effect of this English influence. Meanwhile, 
the captivity of Pius the Seventh, apparently placing him under the 
control of the French emperor, was used by the vetoists as an argument 
in favor of the concession of "securities" to the British government. 

While the bill was pending, various Catholic meetings took place in 
Dublin, and various speeches were delivered by O'Connell, for the most 
part bearing reference to the bill, as being for the time the all-absorbing 
topic of interest. I shall briefly notice some of those meetings and 
harangues. 

On the 29th of May, 1813, our hero read in the Catholic Board the 
unanimous repudiation by the Irish Catholic prelates of the proposed 
religious "securities." He then delivered a speech of considerable 



294 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

length, characterized by his usual power, in which he treated with 
scorn the commission contemplated by the bill. He assumed that Peel, 
whom he nicknamed "Orange Peel," and called ' a raw youth, squeezed 
out the workings of I know not what factory in England" [PeeV s father, 
old Sir Robert, tvas a successful cotton-spinner), and sent over to Ireland 
'before he got rid of the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs" — he 
assumed that Peel, Lord Manners, the chancellor, "the duke of Rich- 
mond's privy councillor, the Right Honorable Doctor Duigenan! . . . 
that religious bulldog particularly fitted for worrying Popish bishops," 
William Saurin and Jack Giffurd, would be the live commissioners. He 
ended by moving a vote of thanks to the "Catholic prelates in Ireland 
for their ever-vigilant and zealous attention to the interests of the Cath- 
olic Church in Ireland." 

To this Anthony Strong Hussey moved, as an amendment, that the 
bishops should simply be thanked for their communication. That pri- 
vately-pensioned aristocrat, the stiff and solemn Counsellor Bellew, sup- 
ported Hussey's motion in an able, but discreditable speech. His 
brother. Sir Edward Bellew, took the same side in a theological dis- 
course. O'Connell replied. He said of Bellew's oration that "it was a 
speech of much talent and much labor and preparation." Quoth Bel- 
lew, •• I spoke extempore." O'Connell retorts : "We shall see whether 
this extempore effort of the Learned gentleman will appear in the news- 
papers to-morrow in the precise words in which it was uttered this day." 
He next sets his audience laughing at Messrs. Hussey and Bagot. The 
former, being of "an economical turn of mind," is "stingy and niggard" 
of praise; the latter, Dan says, "told us that lie had made a speech but 
a fortnight ago which we did not understand, and he has now added an- 
other which is unintelligible; . . . and so . . . he concludes most logic- 
ally that the bishops were wrong, and that he and Mr. Hussey are right." 
Sir Edward Bellew's "learned and lengthened distinction between essen- 
tial and non-essential discipline" is now ridiculed. Presently he says, 
"And now I address myself to the learned brother of the theological 
baronet," Counsellor Bellew, it appears, had asked attention because 
he so seldom addressed the audience. " It reminds me," says O'Connell, 
"of the piayer of the English officer before battle: 'Croat Lord,' said 
he, 'during the forty years I have lived 1 never troubled you before with 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 295 

a single prayer. I have, therefore, a right that you should grant me one 
request, and do just as I desire, for this once!' " After causing great 
laughter, O'Connell asks the assembly to listen to him unravelling "the 
spider-web" of Bellew's sophistry, on grounds different from that gentle- 
man's claim — namely, because he (O'Connell) constantly "attended to 
the varying posture of their affairs." 

Mr. Bellew was one of the first Catholics called to the bar after the 
relaxation of the penal prohibition. His aristocratic birth and connec- 
tions gave him great advantages. At one time he had the lion's share 
of the Catholic business. He was six years receiving a secret pension 
from government before his corruption became known. The English 
reformers got at the list of private pensioners ; among them O'Connell 
read the name of Bellew. From that moment O'Connell had only to 
say, " I thank God I am not a pensioner," in order to cover Bellew with 
confusion, silence his opposition and set the audience against him. This 
was the more mortifying to Counsellor Bellew on account of his punc- 
tilious disposition. His favorite motto was, "Touch my honor, touch 
my eye." It is stated, however, that this did not prevent him from 
accepting an additional pension of £200 per annum — perhaps the reward 
of his vicious speech — shortly after the meeting I have just noticed. 

At a meeting of the Catholic Board on the 29th of May, 1813, 
O'Connell spoke at considerable length on the subject of the prince- 
regent's pledges with respect to Catholic emancipation. O'Connell 
asserted that he had heard Lord Fingal state, in Fitzpatrick's shop, that 
the regent had made him a verbal pledge in favor of emancipation, in 
presence of "Lord Clifden and the late Lord Petre;" which Lord Fingal 
had immediately after committed to paper. O'Connell added that when 
Lord Fingal had made this statement "there were three or four others 
present, one of whom was his" (O'Connell s) "respected friend, Major 
Bryan," and that the statement "could not have been intended for any 
secresy." O'Connell concluded by moving that the earl of Fingal be 
requested to communicate to the Board the contents of the paper con- 
taining the prince's declaration. Major Bryan then bore testimony to 
the accuracy of O'Connell's statement. Sir Francis Goold, he said, was 
also present when Lord Fingal related the circumstance. Mr. Bagot 
expressed an opinion that " Lord Fingal would not consent to the request 



296 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 

that was about to be made to him — nay, he had authority for avowing 
the fact. Why should he, then, be placed in an invidious and disagree- 
able position?" Mr. Bagot also "deprecated a warfare with the first 
magistrate of these realms, who could do service, and might do injury. 
Some gentlemen seemed to consider such a warfare useful to the cause 
of Ireland." 

O'Connell replied to Mr. Bagot. He showed that, while the Cath- 
olics were full of " praises of the regent and full of their hopes from him, 
calling him their early friend, their best and proudest hope, it was then, 
even then, in the full tide of their warm affections, that they had been 
met by a state-prosecution. ... It was then that the common police- 
justices were sent to arrest the noble earl at their head." It was long 
after this prosecution that "the 'unworthy witchery' was mourned." 
The prince's favorites, too, "the god-like Perceval" and Lord Yarmouth, 
were their enemies. O'Connell then moved that the earl of Donough- 
in« no be requested to present their petition to the House of Lords. He 
next criticised severely Grattan's bill, a bill drawn up by three Protect- 
ant lawyers — Messrs. Wallace, Burton and Burrowes; "not a single 
Catholic consulted upon it." He praised Grattan's "more than human " 
eloquence. Grattan was himself incapable of deception, "but the very 
generosity and nobleness of his mind exposes him to the delusions of 
others." O'Connell protests strongly against the course pursued, and 
sneers at Canning as "a powerful framer of jests" and at Castlereagh 
"the speeching man." 

The application made by the secretary of the Board to Lord Fingal, 
in consequence of O'Connell's motion, produced no good effect; indeed, 
it only caused unpleasantness — assertions on one side and denials on 
the other. Lord Fingal considered "that conversations between indi- 
viduals, of whatever rank, were not fit subjects of public discussion. 
The pledge referred to was not in his possession." In short, there was 
a deal of unprofitable "fending and proving" — O'Connell and Major 
Bryan on the one part, Lords Fingal and Clifden and Sir Francis Goold 
on the other. At this distance of time, the dispute is not, if it ever were, 
a matter of great interest; still less is it a matter of importance. 

On the 13th of June, at an aggregate meeting in Fishamble Street 
Theatre, when O'Connell mentioned the name of Dr. Milner, the bishop 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 297 

of Castaballa, the journals of the day tell us he was interrupted by 
acclamations. Every voice greeted the distinguished English prelate's 
name. Clapping of hands and beating of feet continued for several 
minutes, renewed at three successive intervals. The distinct resolution 
in Dr. Milner's favor, on account of his co-operation with the Prelates 
of Ireland in opposing the ecclesiastical regulations of G rattan's bill, 
when moved at a later period of the proceedings, drew down thunders 
of applause. The whole assembly rose, as if moved by a single soul. 
The men uncovered and waved their hats; "the ladies, too, came for- 
ward and by courtesies signified their participation in the general feel- 
ing." "When the burst of enthusiasm at the first announcement of Dr. 
Milner's name had subsided, O'Connell spoke on the position of the 
Catholic cause. He laughed the relief bill and the proposed " securi- 
ties" to scorn, insisted that Grattan was "mistaken," gave expression to 
the repugnance he felt towards Canning, who, he said, only affected to be 
their friend "because, since his conduct to his colleague, Castlereagh, he 
has found it difficult to obtain a niche in any administration." Canning 
and Castlereagh had fought a duel, in which the former had been 
wounded. Of Castlereagh, he asked, "Does not Grattan know that Lord 
Castlereagh first dyed his country in blood and then sold her?" Immedi- 
ately after this he observed. "Ireland, in the connection with England, 
has but too constantly shared the fate of the prodigal's dog — I mean no 
personal allusion" (a laugh) — "she has been kicked in the insolence of 
prosperity, and she has borne all the famine and distress of adversity." 
He next traces the history of the penal laws, after which he vigorously 
denounces "the Orange banditti," entering at large into their history 
and pointing out "the horrors" of their system. Lord Kenyon and 
Lord Yarmouth he abuses as their patrons ; "the first" he styles "an 
insane religionist of the Welsh jumper sect, who, bounding in the air, 
imagines he can lay hold of a limb of the Deity, like Macbeth snatch- 
ing at the air-drawn dagger of his fancy. He would be simply ridicu- 
lous, but for the mischievous malignity of his holy piety, which desires 
to convert Papists from their errors through the instrumentality of dag- 
gers of steel." Of Lord Yarmouth, O'Connell adds, " If I could, I would 
not disgust myself with the description." This speech, in which, as 
might be expected, he also lashes unsparingly the bigots — Nicholl, Scott, 



298 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Duigenan and Giffard — was greeted at its close with warm and general 
applause. 

At this meeting O'Connell rose to speak a second and even a third 
and fourth time. In his second address he complains that the Board is 
£3000 in debt, and proposes that a fund be raised, "to counteract the 
effects of Orange persecution and to meet the expenses of the petitions." 
It was to move the vote of thanks to Dr. Milner that he rose the third 
time. "That venerable prelate," said O'Connell, "has been expelled by 
the paltry club calling itself the ' Catholic Board of England.' " He 
adds that, the very same day, "they thanked the master of the Flogging 
and Torturing Club in Dublin, my Lord Castlereagh." The resolution 
in honor of the bishop of Castaballa was passed by acclamation. 

I have already mentioned, in the present work, that Dr. Milner was 
originally in favor of the veto, though subsequently he became one of its 
most vehement antagonists. This change of sentiment on his part won 
him little favor with the aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics. 
With the English Catholics he became absolutely unpopular. These 
last, indeed, were, for the most part, all along favorable to the veto. It 
is even said that in 1791, in their anxiety to be speedily emancipated, 
they had entertained some design of making themselves independent of 
the Holy See and styling themselves Catholic Dissenters. Mr. Plowden, 
the Catholic historian, writes thus: "The views of the English Catholics 
went far beyond those of the vetoists of Ireland — namely, to shake oil' 
their dependence upon the see of Rome, and establish national bishops 
not drawing their jurisdiction from the Christian primate; and this in 
accordance with the Jansenistical doctrines of [Jtrecht, and in the 
manner of the reformed English bishops from the time of Henry the 
Eighth downwards." 

At this meeting O'Connell also moved an address to the persecuted 
Caroline, the unhappy wife of the prince-regent. O'Connell made a 
warm speech in her favor. To the end of her life he was one of her 
most strenuous defenders. On the present occasion he lashed himself 
into a perfect state of chivalrous excitement, and declared himself ready 
to take the field in behalf of her daughter, the Princess Charlotte, in 
case the duke of York and the Orangemen should attempt to interfere 
with her right to the succession. "I am against the duke," says Dan, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 299 

"and for the princess." Again: "If they shall attempt to alter the 
succession, I will fight against the traitors and for the young princess, 
at your head or by your side." If this burst of knight-errantry should 
fail to provoke the reader to smile, at least he will not refuse the meed 
of laughter to the following sharp, but humorous, hit at the prince- 
regent and his antiquated charmer, the marchioness of Hertford : " The 
fashion of cutting the throats of wives is gone by. Henry the Eighth, the 
English apostle of the Reformation, had a speedy method of getting rid 
of a disagreeable wife. He it was that first discovered the errors of the 
Church of Rome in the fair face of a young lady.* In the present day, 
it is said, that the crimes of the Catholics have been detected in the 
bloated visage of an ancient matron. The taste of Henry was more 
correct, but not more laudable." A slight passing notice is enough to 
devote to this passage of O'Connell's life. Of course, it is quite outside 
the scope of this biography to pronounce any opinion whatever as to the 
guilt or innocence of the unfortunate princess of Wales. I may just 
remark that, even if she were guilty, the conduct of that worthless, 
faithless Sybarite, her husband, was so execrable as to deprive him of 
all title to public sympathy, and still leave the unhappy lady, of the two, 
the greater object of interest. 

On the 29th of June, 1813, O'Connell made a long speech, chiefly on 
the subject of "the repeal of the union." Some of the sentiments to 
which he gave expression on this occasion are worthy of record and 
remembrance. "Next," says he, "your enemies accuse me of a desire 
for the independence of Ireland. I admit the charge, and let them make 
the most of it. I have seen Ireland a kingdom ; I reproach myself with 
having lived to behold her a province. Yes, I confess it — I will ever be 
candid upon the subject — I have an ulterior object — the repeal of the 

UNION, AND THE RESTORATION TO OLD IRELAND OF HER INDEPENDENCE." Loud 

acclamations followed these words, which lasted for several minutes. 

Again he says : "I would sacrifice my existence to restore to Ireland 
her independent legislature ; but I do not desire to restore precisely such 

* The above passage reminds one of Gray the poet's gallant couplet on Henry the Eighth and 
Anna Boleyn : 

" When Love could teach a monarch to be wise, 
And gospel light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes." 



300 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COSNELL. 



a parliament as she had before. No; the act of restoration necessarily 
implies a reformation. . . . 

"Desiring as 1 do the repeal of the union, I rejoice to see how our 
enemies promote that great object, Yes, they promote its inevitable 
success by their very hostility to Ireland ; they delay the liberties of the 
Catholic, but they compensate us most amply, because they advance the resto- 
ration of Ireland. By leaving one cause of agitation, they have created 
and they will embody and give shape and form to a public mind and a 
public spirit. . . . 

" I repeat it; the delay of emancipation I bear with pleasure, because 
in that delay is included the only prospect of obtaining my great, my 
ultimate object — the legislative independence of my native land." 

In this oration he again lashes the Orangemen. There is consider- 
able characteristic humor in the following onslaught on Lord Kenyon. 
This Lord Kenyon was the celebrated lawyer's son: 

"To descend from the nation to an individual. Can anything be 
more beastly stupid than the conduct of Lord Kenyon. who is now- 
organizing Orange lodges? Why does not the animal see that the prin- 
ciple of religious exclusion might have prevented him from being a lord? 
that he has escaped into sinecure places, property and a peerage by the 
accident of his father's creed? For example : if his father, who was a 
common writing-clerk to an attorney, if he by accident had been a 
Papist, the present Lord Kenyon, instead of being a peer, would, most 
probably, have been a private soldier or a peasant, or, at the utmost, by 
a timely conversion from the errors of Popery, he might have arrived at 
the dignity of being the first preacher and highest bouncer of some 
society of Welsh 'jumpers.'" [Laughter.) "Yes; my Lord Kenyon, if 
he bad a particle of understanding, would feel that his Orange exertions 
expose the upstart only to the contempt of a people whom he may 
oppress, but of whom he would not dare personally to insult the lowest, 
individual." 

The following gives a most amusing instance of the monstrous lies 
and calumnies indulged in, at the expense of Ireland, by the unprinci- 
pled and utterly unscrupulous press of England, especially — (though, am 
I right in saving especially? Save English journalists indeed learned 
to be one whit more veracious in their dealings with Ireland at this 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 301 

hour ? What of the Saturday Revieiv, Times, Pail-Mall Gazette, etc. etc. ?) 
— especially, I was about to say, in the earlier portion of the present 
century : 

" The no-Popery cry commenced last year in the very centre of the 
cloth manufactory. It commenced with the dealers in cloth at Ponte- 
fract, in Yorkshire ; and I need only appeal to the Leeds newspaper for 
the absurd virulence with which persecution is advocated in that town. 

"Why, in that very paper, I read about a fortnight ago an account 
of a fresh rebellion in Ireland — nay, in Dublin ! ! As none of you heard 
of it, let me inform you that it actually took place." [Loud laughter.) 
" I forget the day, but that is not material. It took place in Exchequer 
street. The Nottingham regiment covered itself with glory ! They 
fought the Popish rebels for two hours ; the rebels ascended the houses, 
fired out of the windows, threw brickbats and large stones from the 
roofs! Two regiments of horse, three regiments of foot, the Flying 
Artillery from Island Bridge, and the regiment of artillery from Chapel- 
izod, all shared in the honor of the day ! and, at length, the main body 
of the rebels retired to the Wicklow Mountains, and the residue of them 
went to bed in town. Fortunately no person was killed or wounded, and 
tranquillity was restored by a miracle. 

" Do you imagine I jest with you ? No ; I solemnly assure you that 
the story is gravely told in the Leeds newspaper. Some of the London 
journals have copied it, even to the scrap of bad Latin with which 
Yorkshire dulness has adorned it ; and there is not a maker of woollen 
cloth at Leeds that would not swear to the truth of every sentence, and 
every word of itf 

Does it not seem almost incredible that human impudence, or human 
stupidity, or bigoted credulity, or all combined, could have concocted 
such a monstrous fabrication? Of a surety, if truth be oftentimes 
stranger than fiction, fiction sometimes does outrun truth. 

O'Connell towards the close of this speech gave some illustrations 
of "the profligacy that is induced by the present state of the law in the 
mode of selecting juries." He reminded his audience how Catholics 
were carefully excluded; how "envenomed bigots" were gathered to- 
gether "to pronounce a verdict of conviction by anticipation." He 
proposes that a second petition should be sent "to the legislature, to 



3Q-2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 



take into consideration the judicial system in Ireland — the administra- 
tion of law amongst us." They must be prepared to prove, "in their 
details," the facts stated in their petitions; how all a certain bank- 
director wanted from government was, "that when they should have a 
Papist to try they should put him on the jury ! and he was put on a 
Papist's jury!" (here the audience cried, "Shame!" and well they might) ; 
how a " Mr. Warner was entitled, by the courtesy usually adopted by 
the" (Dublin) "corporation, to be sheriff;" how, because he would not 
pledge himself against the Catholics, when called on to do so by Jack 
Giffard, he was rejected; how Messrs. Morgan and Studdart were in- 
stantly appointed because of their bitter hostility to Catholics. He 
laments that " Castlereagh, Dr. Black and the regium donum have con- 
verted the Presbyterians into Orangemen." If he ever spoke slightingly 
of Grattan, he is prepared "to read his recantation." He adds, "Grat- 
tan, if he be mistaken, must ever be beloved by, and a pride to, every 
Irish heart." He concludes by moving a resolution respecting Irish 
manufactures, and also that for forwarding a second Catholic petition. 

On the 10th of July he supports Mr. Mahon, in his objection to some 
letters of Sir Francis Goold and Mr. James O'Gorman, said to contain 
"attacks upon individuals," being publicly read. "A person in India," 
says Dan, "might thus assail" any gentlemen. "The individuals thus 
attacked would have no opportunity of righting themselves by indicting 
that chastisement, which an unfounded and insolent letter might merit." 
This sentiment was applauded. 

During the same month we find him making some speeches bearing 
reference to an address to Hcniy Grattan, brought forward by Mr. Mc- 
Donnell. Of course, O'Connell, while disapproving of Grattan's bill, 
had the highest veneration for the illustrious patriot himself. Accord- 
ingly, when the address was so altered that, while being in the highest 
degree complimentary to Grattan, it could not be said to express the 
smallest approval of the "securities" of his "Relief" bill, its adoption 
was eagerly seconded by O'Connell. The difference of opinion on the 
subject of this bill was now unhappily widening fast into an absolute 
breach between the aristocratic and popular sections of the Board. 
Those especially, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the vote 
of thanks to the Catholic bishops, were nursing their dudgeon and sulkily 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 303 

keeping aloof from the meetings of the Board. In one of his speeches 
on the address to Grattan, O'Connell said, "Let us, then, concur in the 
two leading features of this address — eternal gratitude to Grattan; 
fidelity, unalterable fidelity, to our country." 

About the same time, we find O'Connell bringing forward resolutions 
for the encouragement of Irish manufactures : "1st. That no member 
be allowed to speak or vote at the Board, after the 1st of August, who 
shall not be clothed in Irish manufacture. 

" 2d. That the ladies of Ireland be entreated to encourage the wear 
of their native manufacture, and not to introduce any other. 

"3d. That a committee of seven be appointed, for the purpose of 
calling upon the Protestant gentlemen of the country to form ' An asso- 
ciation for the encouragement of consumption of Irish, manufactures? " 

The resolutions were all received with loud applause ; they passed 
by acclamation. The following gentlemen were named the committee 
of seven : Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Richard O'Gorman, Dr. Sheridan, E. Cox, 
Esq,, Counsellor O'Gorman, Counsellor Finn and R. O'Bryan, Esq. 

This movement, however, like many similar ones attempted since, in 
the end came to nothing. In truth, to attempt creating a system of 
Irish manufactures, while Ireland is under the hoof of England, seems 
to me, if I may use an old, vulgar phrase, "like putting the car before 
the horse." English capitalists can always, when it suits them, afford 
to combine and pour in goods for little or nothing to crush Irish rivals. 
Such branches of manufactures, indeed, as don't interfere with the 
English manufacturers, may possibly thrive more or less in Ireland, even 
in her existing state. Tet I remember, some score of years ago, even a 
poor match manufactory in Dublin, which one might have imagined 
hardly worth interfering with, deliberately and pitilessly crushed by a 
combination of English competitors. Two or three boxes of English 
matches might for a time be had in Dublin for the "ridiculously small 
price" of one half-penny. As soon as ever the poor Irish "greenhorns" 
were "victimized," English matches rose again. In short, if the Irish 
people want to establish Irish manufactures on any large scale, let them 
first win their national independence. 

In this same month of July, O'Connell brought forward a motion 
that the Board should agree to a vote of thanks to " that very important 



304 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCCONNELL. 

body the" [Presbyterian) "synod of Ulster, for the late vote of the mem- 
bers composing it in favor of religious liberty." The reporters of the 
Post and Freeman tell us that he prefaced his motion with a speech 
characterized by "his wonted eloquence." His sentiments, on this occa- 
sion, at all events breathed his usual spirit of religious toleration. After 
noticing the bigoted efforts of some of the clergy of the Established 
Church, he uttered words to the following effect: "He was willing to 
hope, notwithstanding all that could be done, their efforts, and the efforts 
of those who set them in motion, would prove ineffectual, that every 
odious distinction would be obliterated, and that every man in this 
country would be ambitious for one title, and one title only, that of 
Irishman !" Loud cheering responded to this sentiment. 

He concluded by saying, "Union and harmony were the great and 
healing balsams which he wished and hoped to see applied to the wounds 
of his country." 

On the 27th of August, 1813, the duke of Richmond left Ireland. I 
need not say thai he was little regretted. There is a village called Rich- 
mond, outside the city of Dublin, at the left side of Ballybough Bridge. 
During Richmond's viceroyalty the populace at public meetings, while 
waiting for the commencement, or during the intervals, of the proceedings, 
were wont to amuse themselves by proposing "Three groans for the left 
side of Ballybough Bridge!" This masked insult to the unpopular viceroy 
would invariably elicit hearty explosions of laughter. Richmond was 
succeeded by an astute and wily diplomatist, Lord Whitworth. This 
nobleman was the English ambassador with whom Napoleon had a 
rather violent scene shortly before the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. 
His aim, on becoming lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was, at least, twofold — 
to corrupt the Dublin pivss and break up the Catholic Board. The first 
part of his task was not very difficult. The sum of £10,500 purchased 
the souls and — much more valuable to Whitworth — the pens of the 
proprietors of the Gazette, Dublin Journal, Hibernian Journal, Patriot, 
and Correspondent. During Lord Whitworth's administration govern 
ment pamphleteers had "a good time of it," also. How "His Excel- 
lency" prospered in his machinations against the Catholic Board will 
be seen. 

Soon after he landed in Dublin, violent dissensions broke out among 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 305 

the Catholics at a public meeting in Cork, on the 30th August, 1813. 
In the chapter on the trial of John Magee, I have already taken some 
notice of these disgraceful proceedings. Some of the members of the 
Cork board were inclined to concede the veto to the Crown ; others not. 
At this meeting, held on the 30th of August, at the Lancasterian school, 
a gentleman — John Galway of Lota — who had voted, at the General 
Board in Dublin, in opposition to the motion of thanks to the prelates 
for their resistance to the veto, was moved to the chair by Mr. James 
Roche, one of the opposite party, probably from motives of conciliation. 
But a general outcry arose against Mr. Galway. He persisted in keep- 
ing his place; the mass of the meeting persisted in their refusal to 
accept him as chairman. Some attempts were next made to appoint 
another chairman. As these were unsuccessful, the confusion now be- 
came "worse confounded." Counsellor McDonnell, Mr. Roche and other 
members of the board considered among themselves for some minutes, 
with the consent of the meeting, Mr. Roche promising, amid loud cheers, 
that the reasonable wishes of the people should be complied with. Mr. 
Barry of Barry's Lodge, one of the board, then called out in a loud 
voice, "Will you suffer the proceedings of the day to go on?" Some 
voices from the crowd exclaim, " No ; not until you have another chair- 
man." On this the board retire abruptly ; their secession excites vio- 
lent agitation and disgust. Counsellor McDonnell entreats the assembly 
to maintain order. While they are busy about the appointment of an- 
other chairman our hero appears upon the troubled scene. He is greeted 
with acclamations and blessings — in a word, with an uncontrollable 
uproar of patriotic exultation — and conducted to the chair. Presently, 
however — having talked the meeting into good-humor and a desire for 
reunion — he goes out for the purpose of seeing the board. Meanwhile, 
the heat and pressure in the room become insupportable. Besides, several 
thousands outside, who cannot get in, clamor for adjournment. Accord- 
ingly, by a unanimous vote, the meeting adjourns to a large open plain, 
adjoining the school-room. Counsellor O'Leary now takes the chair; 
order prevails. 

Several Protestant gentlemen being observed at a distance, a desire 
was expressed to accommodate them, when one of them, Counsellor 
Dennis, approached the chair, and explained, as "the mouthpiece" of 



306 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the others, that while his friends and himself felt "warm and ardent" 
feelings of sympathy with "the glorious and just" cause of the Cath- 
olics, they did not like identifying themselves with either section, while 
lamentable divisions prevailed among the Catholic body. "No," said 
Mr. Dennis; "those steady and long-tried friends to your cause — 
Stowell, Beamish, Crawford — will not attach themselves to any party, 
but go with the unanimous voice of the Irish Catholics." 

After some further proceedings had taken place (Counsellor McDonnell 
had delivered a speech explanatory of some of the causes of misunder- 
standing between the two sections), O'Connell returned. He proposed, 
in the interests of harmony, that they should at once send a deputation 
of ten to the seceders to "commune with them upon the present differ- 
ences." This was agreed to, and the Board received the deputation in a 
bed-chamber, whither they had retired from the hootings of the populace. 
Alter two hours' delay O'Connell returned. He said: "There had been 
an unanimous agreement come to on resolutions perfectly without qualifi- 
cation of any kind, and unequivocally demanding ' Simple Repeal,' as it 
was phrased, that is, the unconditional abrogation of the penal code." 
He announced also that " the Board, obedient to the manifestations of 
popular feeling that day witnessed, would now consider their office at 
an end ;" but would offer themselves " for re-election as members of a 
Board" to consist of sixty-eight members, double the number of the last. 
He in conclusion, begged them to forgive the repentant members of the 
Board and admit Mr. Galway to preside over the meeting. "Will you 
refuse forgiveness to persons repenting their errors?" "No," responded 
the crowd, now in a most amiable mood, "we forgive them and may 
heaven forgive them!" Dan thanked the assembly with great effusion, 
he compared Galway to the prodigal child. 

While O'Connell was still speaking, the seceders made their appear- 
ance. Mr. Galway at once addressed the meeting, congratulating them 
on their prospects of unanimity. Twelve resolutions had been agreed 
to by all. "Any beyond that number should be dealt with as mere 
individual suggestions open to discussion and opposition." The resolu- 
tions were then read. It was proposed to add the names of over thirty 
gentlemen to the existing Board (we find the name of O'Connell's uncle, 
"old Hunting-cap," among the number; Most of the resolutions were 



THE JLI^E ')F DANIEL O'CONNELL. 307 



unopposed ; but when three, which contained expressions of gratitude 
and glowing thanks to the right reverend Dr. Milner, John Magee and 
Daniel O'Connell, were brought forward, a Mr. B. Moylan advanced to 
propose an amendment. This is the part of the proceedings to which I 
referred toward the close of the chapter about Magee' s trial. Moylan 
accused Dr. Milner of "tergiversation," called Mr. Magee "a convicted 
libeller," and expressed disapproval of O'Connell's "public conduct." 
One Eugene McSweeny of Mary street, Cork, played the pitiful part of 
his seconder. 

After a generous remonstrance from Mr. Dennis, the Protestant bar- 
rister already noticed, against Moylan's application of such unworthy 
epithets to Mr. Magee, coupled with an appeal to the audience to "feel 
as Irishmen should feel, to love in their hearts the hero who gloriously 
falls in a great public cause," O'Connell came forward : he warmly 
defended Dr. Milner, who, it may here be mentioned, on more than one 
occasion, in the course of this year, 1813, had been grossly insulted by 
the leading English Catholics on account of his successful opposition to 
the Veto and to Grattan's relief bill. They had disavowed his writings 
in his presence, had resolved that his Brief Memorial had their marked 
disapproval. To mortify him further, they had passed a vote of thanks 
to their literary champion, Charles Butler, when Dr. Milner had told 
them that that gentleman was one of "the false brethren," alluded to 
in this production. They had even gone so far as to expel him " from 
the private Board or select committee, appointed by the general Board 
of British Catholics." Against this he had protested, "as having acted," 
to quote the closing words of his protest, "in behalf of thirty bishops 
and of more than five millions of Catholics, whose religious business I 
am authorized to transact." Sir John Hippesly is said to have been 
guilty on this occasion of an atrocious insult to the learned and venera- 
ble prelate. Indeed the conduct of the aristocratic Englishmen present 
had resembled nothing so much as that of an uncouth and shameless 
mob. They had pursued the old man as, with calm dignity, he was 
retiring from the room, with outrageous hissings and hootings and shout- 
ings. Well might Dr. Husenbeth, the biographer of Dr. Milner, exclaim : 
" A. more disgraceful proceeding is hardly to be found in the history of 
the Church." Probably Dr. Milner' s sympathy and co-operation with 



308 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



O'Connell, whom he greatly admired, and the Irish Catholics, had added 
bitterness to the hostile feelings of his Catholic countrymen. After their 
cowardly achievement, they had gone about London for several days, 
boasting with an insane exultation of the ignoble deed they had done. 

I pass over other insults perpetrated against Dr. Milner by the 
English Catholics, of a piece with the strange conduct I have just de- 
scribed, and return to O'Connell's speech. After defending Dr. Mil- 
ner and heaping scorn on his enemies, after sneering at those "erudite 
politicians" — those "modest, meek, humble and enlightened independ- 
ents," "those two youths," Moylan and McSweeny, who, when "the pop- 
ulation of Ireland declare against all vetoism, under all and every shape 
and form," come forward " for provisional securities " — he next expresses 
his hot indignation at Moylan's application of the epithet "convicted 
libeller" to John Magee. He tells the audience to sustain and cheer 
that persecuted journalist by a vote of thanks. In conclusion, In- says: 
"I will no ox, and the more I am maligned, the more will I be pleased, 
and hope for the prospect of success; nor will I ever doubt myself, until 
I shall hear those wretched hirelings of corruption teem forth odious 
praises to me! Then doubt me, but not till ///>//. 

"Externally and internally I will tight the enemies of us all. . . . 
But adopt not this exaggerated praise offered to me here to-day; it is 
not possible I could, or any man could, be deserving of it. 1 give up 
this point to Mr. Moylan; 1 make Mr. Moylan a present of this motion, 
and let him give us the rest." (Loud and persistent cries <>/ "No, >/<> ; 
we mill not, we ivill not I") 

"Then, beforehand, I thank you, sincerely and honestly I thank you; 
it encourages, it cheers me on. I here want language to express my 
feelings. I iv ill stand by you while I lire; f will never forsake poor 
L> I* Old." 

"When the enthusiastic acclamations that almost drowned O'Connell's 
closing words had. after the lapse of some minutes, ceased, James Roche 
seconded O'Connell's protest againsl Moylan's amendment. Major Tor- 
rens, a liberal and enlightened Protestant, then mad'' some excellent ob- 
servations. He derided the notions of those who pretended that dangers 
would result from the admission of Catholics to Parliament, lie dwelt 
on the fact that English liberty had grown up during the Catholic ages. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 309 

After Major Torrens had concluded, no less a person than Remmy Shee- 
han, subsequently a convert to "the Church by law established," and pro- 
prietor and editor of the Dublin Evening Mail, for so many years the able, 
but bigoted, organ of the Ascendency faction (I believe it exists still), came 
forward. Perhaps this was his first appearance on the stage of politics. 
He proclaimed himself "a member of that body which Counsellor O'Con- 
nell styled 'independent, because nobody would depend upon them.'" 
He then said he was aware of O'Connell's authority — " the unfounded 
assertions of the Mercantile Chronicle." At this point, he and his audi- 
ence beginning to get on bad terms, he told them he wouldn't be put 
down till morning. " I say again, the unfounded assertions of the Chron- 
icle.'" As this brought down on his devoted head an uproar of popular 
rage and clamor, he told his hearers that "he was a very young man," and 
that "he never before addressed a public meeting." He then repeated 
that the " statements in the Chronicle about the independents were un- 
founded and slanderous." Here a downright tempest of hooting, hissing 
and disapprobation of all sorts burst upon the unlucky oratorical debutant. 
His grim resolution not to "go home till morning" speedily evaporated ; 
he ingloriously cut short his harangue, merely saying, "As the meeting 
will not suffer me to speak, I shall retire." Exit Eemmy — at least for 
a season. I may as well add, however, that, some years ago, Reminy 
departed this life, if not in the odor of sanctity, at least, like many an- 
other renegade before and probably since, in the bosom of the ancient 
Church he had deserted "for filthy lucre." 

Counsellor McDonnell and James N". Mahon also addressed the meet- 
ing. After the latter gentleman, another remarkable man in his day, 
very unlike the redoubtable Remigius, however, arose to speak — the 
Rev. Dr. England, subsequently Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston, 
South Carolina. He denied indignantly some charges of exercising 
undue influence over the people and packing meetings, that had been 
made against the clergy of Cork, and himself especially. Fagan, in his 
life of O'Connell, asserts that "the principal mover in the whole of this 
democratic insurrection against aristocratic pretension in Cork was 
the celebrated Dr. England. He was a man of great powers of mind, 
amazing intellectual energy, possessing, too, a masculine eloquence, 
and a stern, unflinching determination, well suited to a popular leader. 



310 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 

He had all the qualities that contribute to the influence, and are neces- 
sary to the office, of an agitator. Xo literary labor was too great for 
him ; no opposition was too powerful. He was from the first a decided 
anti-vetoist. Indeed, we may affirm, he was the guiding genius of the 
anti-Quarantotti movement '' (tee shall hear more of Monsignor Quarantottl 
shortly). " He was, at the time we write of, editor of the Cork Mercan- 
tile Chronicle, an honest, well-conducted paper, the downfall of which is 
a lasting stigma on the patriotism of the South. He worked up the 
movement against the local Catholic Board, and at last forced the mem- 
bers to publish their proceedings. ... It was the prevailing opinion of 
that day that Dr. England was the author of the celebrated letter which, 
under the signature of ' One of the Populace,' was published in the 
Evening Post, and for whicli an action was brought against the unfortu- 
nate John Magee by one of the 'Protesters,* Mr. Coppinger. The action 
was tried in Cork, and is to this day memorable in that city, from the 
cutting sarcasms against the • property-the-staiulard-of-opinion ' gen- 
tlemen, uttered by Magee' s counsel in one of the most telling speeches 
ever pronounced in a court of justice. The writer was a boy at the 
time, but he well recollects being at the trial; and he has now in his 
mind's eye Harry Deane Grady, amidst the profoundest silence, giving 
expression to those biting sentences that arc. even to this day, repeated 
by the descendants of thai generation." 

I shall presently refer again to the letter here spoken of, which John 
O'Connell, differing from Pagan, attributes to his illustrious father. Re- 
verting, for a moment, to the meeting of the 30th of August, when the 
speaking terminated, Moylan's amendment to Counsellor McDonnell's 
three resolutions was put, with the following result, according to the 
calculations of the newspapers of the day: For the amendment, 0; for 
the votes of thanks to the Might Rev. Dr. Milner. John Magee and 
O'Connell, 10,000. Majority indisputable. 

After this, nothing would satisfy the excited assemblage but to chair 
our hero. A crowd of gentlemen got round him, and. in spite of Ids 
entreaties and resistance, forced him into a chair. He was borne, amid 
the loudest and most enthusiastic huzzas, on the shoulders of his devoted 
people, through Hanover street, part of South Main street, along Tin key 
street, and into the grand parade. By this time the crowd had swelled, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 311 

it is said, to about twenty thousand people. The whole city was aroused. 
The crowd halted at Laffan the hatter's, on the parade, where O'Connell 
lodged. From a window of the house he warmly thanked the admiring 
thousands, recommending them to attend carefully to the registrations. 

From all this hubbub the extent of the discord created by the angrily- 
vexed veto question may be estimated. Nor did the dissensions speedily 
cease. The clergy were abused by the vetoists. They published a reply. 
A large numbe? of vetoists signed a protest against the meeting of the 
30th of August. They held a meeting, too, at the Bush tavern, and 
passed a resolution, which was, as it were, a regular firebrand in the then 
excited state of Irish feeling : " Kesolved, that adopting the wise prin- 
ciple of the constitution by which property is made the standard of 
opinion, we found it impossible at the late aggregate meeting, amidst 
the tumult of the lowest populace — ignorant by necessity and misled 
by design — to ascertain the sense of the Catholics of this city and 
county." 

O'Connell delivered another speech at the Cork Catholic Board on the 
3d of September, in which he expressed regret at the conduct of " the 
Protesters." He showed how they were earning contempt and putting 
themselves in the position of men "fighting against their country." He 
hoped, however, that the seceders would return to their duty. He also 
advocated the use of Irish manufactures. With reference to this part of 
his speech, his son John remarks justly enough : " This was one of the 
many occasions in Mr. O'Connell's life, when he labored in the good 
cause of the deserving, hard- working and most skilful artisans of Ire- 
land. We shall have, unfortunately, to note the failure of several such 
efforts — as all such must fail, till the vitality of industry be restored 
with the money and rich consumers of the country, by the repeal of the 
emaciating Act of Union." I shall quote one passage from this speech 
of the 3d of September. " ' But,' say those who clamor for those securities, 
'if the present Pope died, Bonaparte would undoubtedly raise to the 
papal chair his uncle, Cardinal Fesch.' Be it so. He was willing to 
meet them upon every fair ground. They say, if Cardinal Fesch was 
the Pope, he would be the creature of Bonaparte, and subject to his 
control ; and having the nomination of the Catholic bishops of Ireland, 
he would only appoint such men to that dignity as would be disaffected 



312 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

to the British government, and who would best suit the views of Bona- 
parte. 

" Cardinal Fesch ! who is in disgrace with his nephew, and in exile 
because he opposed, and would not sanction, his marriage with his present 
wifeV 

O'Connell denied that such a man would "disgrace the papal chair" 
"by submitting to the will" of his nephew. 

How far the intrigues of the diplomatic viceroy, Lord Whitworth, 
contributed to all this commotion it is not easy to say. He seems at 
first to have so far succeeded in throwing dust even into the eyes of 
the conductors of the Evening Post, as to induce them, shortly after his 
accession to the Viceregal dignity, to compliment him on his reply to 
an address from Trinity College. However, the Post, directed by Denis 
Scully, in the main fought the battle of truth and right in those days. 
On the 23d of September, a respectable meeting, held at Cavan, passed 
a vote of thanks to Magee and O'Connell. Eneas McDonnell, earlier in 
the same month, had written to Dr. Milner, transmitting to him the 
resolutions passed in his favor by the Catholics of Cork. To this the 
venerable prelate had returned a gracious reply, in which he gave some 
interesting and curious particulars of the disgraceful insolence with 
which the aristocratic Catholics of England, ay, and even some mem- 
bers of the En;_ili>li Catholic clergy, had treated him. 

But the unfortunate Magee, however he may have been gratified 
and comforted in his sore trials by the sympathy and approval of his 
countrymen, was still harassed by prosecutions. The extract 1 have 
given from Pagan refers to the action taken against him by Mr. William 
Coppinger for a letter signed "One of the Populace," and attributed by 
some to Dr. England, by others to our hero. As the letter is amusing 
(it ridicules Coppinger and the resolution passed by the "Protesters," 
affirming that the constitution makes property "the standard of opinion"), 
1 shall give a few extracts from it. 

"They state two things evidently false: first, that there is a prin- 
ciple in the constitution by which property is made the standard of 
opinion. Property is a good standard of contractors; but it is no more 
the standard of opinion than it is the standard of law or of Latin. . . . 
Why. whom do you think those men that declared that property is the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 313 

standard of opinion took as their second chairman ? A friend of mine, 
poor as I am, Mr. William Coppinger, better known by the name of 
'Jamaica!' I was quite sure, sir, that they picked out the second 
richest man amongst them as the standard of their opinion, and as 
their second chairman. You cannot think how pleased I was. Now, 
thought I, the five pounds he owes me these three years will be paid. 
Off I ran to his assignees ; for, sir, I was kept out of my honest earn- 
ings by his being made a bankrupt. Off I ran to his assignees. ' Gen- 
tlemen,' said I, 'pay the five pounds that Mr. Coppinger owes me. He 
has got some great estate — he has certainly got a great property. ■; Prop- 
erty is the standard of opinion." Here it is down in the newspapers, 
signed "William Coppinger." My debt is a fair debt, and honestly due 
— and so pay it.' Tou may judge of my surprise when the assignees 
quietly replied that my debt was certainly a fair one, and that if I went 
to the expense of employing an attorney and moving it regularly, they 
would pay me a dividend as well as the other creditors. I asked what 
the dividend would be. The assignees solemnly assured me they expected 
in another year to be able to make a dividend of two-pence in the pound, 
and that I should certainly get a tenpenny bit for my five pounds. But 
to return. They" {the protesters) "say, secondly, that we are the lowest 
of the populace — 'ignorant by necessity and misled by design.' How 
could you say such a thing, Dan Donovan — you, who are a miller? 
What were you, my dear Dan? Tou were also, in your day, a liberty- 
and-equality boy ; and this is not the doctrine you preached to us at the 
mill. Indeed, indeed, Dan, it does not become you to be an aristocrat. 
To be sure, no great reliance can be placed on the accuracy of men who 
have belied the constitution ; for, I believe, there was never anything 
so untrue as to say that the constitution measures a man's opinion by 
the weight of his purse. Was there ever anything so silly printed? 
Why, if it were true, no rich man could be in point of fact a blockhead ; 
there could be no wealthy fool ! Or, I suppose a rich man who talked 
foolishly might be indicted before the recorder for violating a principle 
of the constitution. 'Tour property, sir,' the recorder would say to the 
convicted dunce, ' your property is made the standard of opinion, and 
you have, in contempt of the wisdom which belongs to property, been 
convicted of having talked nonsense ; and, therefore, you are to be im- 



314 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

prisoned six months at hard labor, to teach you the great principle 
of our constitution — that property is the standard of opinion.' Dear 
Mr. Magee, I should like to see some of our 'protesters' tried at sessions 
under this statute. It is called, I believe, the statute for adjusting the 
standard of opinion by the exact amount of the wealth of each indi- 
vidual." 

During the autumn of this year various other Catholic meetings were 
held in Ireland, at which resolutions, approving of O'Connell's opposition 
to the veto and his conduct at the trial of Magee, were passed. 

At the successful storming of St. Sebastian, in Spain, on the 31st 
of August, O'Connell lost a near relative — the brave Lieutenant John 
O'Connell, of the 43d Regiment. At the siege of Badajos, this gallant 
young man had volunteered on the forlorn hope and been severely 
wounded. At St. Sebastian, he sought the post of danger, where he 
fell combating bravely. 

In November we rind the veto question still sowing dissensions among 
the popular party. Doubtless some of those, who first threw down this 
apple of discord, intended mischief. Burke understood well the machi- 
nations of the enemies of the Irish people. "You will have a schism," 
says he, "and I am greatly mistaken if this is not intended and system- 
atically pursued." The Board, alarmed at the progress which this veto 
or "securities" question -eemed to have made in England, and the ap- 
parent acquiescence in it of the English Catholics, had pledged them- 
selves not to entertain any question of the kind without the previous 
knowledge and approbation of the prelates. Lord Donoughmore and 
Grattan refused to continue in communication with the Catholic Board 
on this basis, that qo "securities" should lie introduced into any future 
bill without previous approval of the bishops. They accused the Board 
of a design of dictating to parliament. On the 20th of November 
O'Connell maintained that Lord Donoughmore and Grattan were mis- 
taken. He denied that the Board hail any desire to dictate. So far 
from that being the case, tiny had even given up the intention of sub- 
mitting a draft of a bill (though that, he argued, would not involve any 
dictation), confining themselves to nine suggestions: "AYh<>," lie asked, 
"spoke of dictation when Mr. Charles. Butler, last year, prepared the 
frame of a bill? . . . Who spoke of dictation when Mr. Grattan pro- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 815 

cured the frame of a bill to be prepared by Mr. Burrowes, by Mr. BurtoD 
and Mr. Wallace?" O'Connell also asks "whether it be the Irish 
popish touch that pollutes the deed?" 

Od the 27th, O'Connell carried a motion "for a committee to prepare 
answers to the letters of Donoughmore and Grattan." On the 1st of 
December we find his friends in the Board rallying round him affection- 
ately to defend him against the numerous attacks made on him at this 
time by the open enemies and the weak or false friends of Ireland. Mr. 
O'Gorman brought the matter forward and spoke of his " transcendent 
desert." Nicholas Mahon agreed with Mr. O'Gorman ; he thought it was 
the duty of the Catholics to repel the attacks upon O'Connell " by some 
lasting memorial, which he could hand down to his latest posterity." He 
also styled O'Connell "the best and dearest friend of his country." Mr. 
Plunket considered that every Catholic was bound to support the un- 
daunted, incorruptible and inflexible supporter of the Catholic cause. 
Though not a member of the Board, he came that day to declare his 
determination to support him at the hazard of his life and fortune. 
O'Connell was the first of Irishmen and the most beloved. It would be 
wonderful were it otherwise. He had labored to expose, at the risk of 
his person and fortune, the errors and corruptions of the enemies of 
Ireland. He had created an unconquerable spirit in the country. His 
object had been to rally men of all persuasions, parties and habits under 
one title, that of Irishmen. The Board, he (Mr. Plunket) thought, should 
manifest by a resolution their conviction of his merits. Mr. O'Connor 
(the chairman) regretted that it should be deemed necessary to delay 
such a measure. Mr. Scully dwelt on O'Connell's claims to the gratitude 
of Ireland, and the failure of all malignant efforts to injure him in his 
profession. O'Connell did more business than any lawyer, without a silk 
gown, had ever before succeeded in doing, yet he found more time, than 
almost any other man, to devote to the public good and for acts of private 
benevolence. Of course Mr. Scully approved of the notice respecting the 
testimonial of the feeling of the Board to him. Mr. Scully referred to 
the alleged secession of the aristocratic members of the Board, and. at 
considerable length, drew a picture of the disagreeable position, in which 
the individuals, who were said to have seceded, must, according to his 
idea, find themselves placed. 



316 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNKLjl. 



O'Connell replied to these kind and flattering speeches with warm 
and grateful emotion : "When first he had volunteered as the advocate 
of his country's rights, he did conceive that he had embarked in the 
service of an insolvent ingratitude." This was a mistake; his reward 
had been great, though "all he would lay claim to was good intention." 
He thanked Mr. Plunket for his kind words; but, "in any personal con- 
troversy, he required neither aid nor seconding. ... If his professional 
career were stopped by any conspiracy, he should not be astonished at 
it." He spoke of his enemies in his usual defiant style. 

On the 11th of December, at the Shakespeare Gallery, Exchequei 
street, the Board voted a service of plate, value one thousand guineas, 
to O'Connell, "as a small tribute of gratitude?" for his intrepidity, ability 
and perseverance in asserting the rights and vindicating the "character 
of his Catholic fellow-countrymen." Viscount Netterville, the Lord 
Ffrench, N. P. O'Gorman, Owen O'Connor (the chairman of the meet- 
ing), George Bryan, Henry Edmond Taafe, Nicholas Mahon and Randal 
McDonnell, Esqs. (Edward Hay was secretary to the meeting), were 
appointed as a committee to carry the vote into effect. The service of 
plate was shortly after presented to O'Connell. At this meeting of the 
11th, his friend, Counsellor Finlay, delivered an address, which, while it 
contained an eloquent panegyric on our hero, reflected severely on Saurin. 
I regret that the limited space remaining at my disposal will not suffer 
me to give of it mini- than the concluding sentence: "But if he, like 
many others, should be fated to endure the ingratitude of the country, 
if he should be placed in the midst of useless friends and implacable 
enemies, if his enemies should gratify their purposes against him — 

" ' Then is the stately column broke, 
The beaeon-light is quenched in smoke, 
The trumpet's silver sound is still, 
The warder silent on the hill.' " 

I think it only fair to add the remark which the late John O'Connell 
thought proper to append to this: "This passage, with its poetic quo- 
tation, was eited last in the declining days of the Repeal Association, 
some months after Daniel O'Connell's death, by poor, poor Tom Steele!' 
The effect was then most thrilling; what the effect would he if now 
cited in a, popular assembly, and whether the prediction it embodies 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 317 

would be held to have come true, it is not for the editor of these speeches 
to say." It will be seen, from this extract, that John O'Connell's sen- 
tences cannot be praised as admirable models either of style or gram- 
matical structure. 

On the 18th of December, O'Connell eloquently thanked the Board 
for the new proof they had given him of their appreciation of his zeal 
and services. Among other things he said : " Even your applause will 
not, because it cannot, increase the devotion with which I have conse- 
crated my existence to Ireland. I have already devoted all the faculties 
of my soul to the pursuit of the liberties of my country, and, humble as my 
capabilities are, I had already given them all to my native land." Their 
gift is too munificent; still he is "glad that it was introduced, because 
it elicited those proofs of friendship ; and I am grateful to my enemies, 
who gave occasion for an exhibition of the feeling which is this day 
witnessed here. . . . The man who dedicates himself to the cause of his 
country must calculate on meeting the hostility and calumny of her 
enemies — the envy and false-heartedness even of her friends. He must 
reckon on the hatred and active malignity of every idolater of bigotry, 
of every minion of power, of every agent of corruption. But that is 
little ; he will have to encounter the hollow and treacherous support of 
pretended friends — of those interested friends respecting whom he will 
in vain exclaim, ' God protect me from my friends ! I can guard myself 
from my enemies.' . . . 

"You have, then, done wisely to grant that precious recompense tc 
one so little deserving as myself, because you have thereby held out a 
prospect to higher minds of what they may expect from you. Tou have 
fanned the flame of pure patriotism, and I trust enlisted in your service 
the juvenile patriots of the land with talents superior — oh ! beyond com- 
parison — to my pretensions." [Here O'Connell turned to Richard Lalor 
Shiel, then quite a young man, who sat near him.) 

"And he and others will be roused to serve and adorn their widowed 
country. Of your traducer (Saurin, no doubt) I shall say nothing. You 
have refuted his calumnies. . . . 

" I have heretofore loved my country for herself — I am now her bribed 
servant, and no master can possibly tempt me to neglect, forsake or betray 
her interests /" 



318 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 



This year the second war between America and England was raging. 
The American brig Argus was capturing numbers of English merchant- 
men in the Channel, even striking terror into the citizens of Dublin. 
At last, off Tuscar Rock, she encountered the Pelican, a British man-of- 
war. After a desperate fight of forty-five minutes, maintained against 
overwhelming odds, the Argus struck her flag. Her captain's leg was 
carried off by a cannon-ball. His officers and crew suffered severely. 
This occurrence may have recalled to O'Connell's mind, the incident of 
his childhood, when he saw the deserters from Paul Jones' vessel. 

Meanwhile O'Connell's professional career was successful beyond 
example. In the autumn assizes of 1813, at Limerick, O'Connell had a 
brief in every one of twenty-six cases that were tried in the record 
court, and a brief also in every case on the criminal side. At Tralee 
and Ennis he was equally successful. We have already seen him politi- 
cally triumphant in Cork this year, where the opposition between the 
two "wings," so to speak, of the Catholic party ran higher than in any 
other locality. Fagan tells us that the local Catholic Board there " con- 
sisted of the Catholic aristocracy and merchants of the city and neigh- 
borhood. Its proceedings were neither open to the public nor the press. 
The people were not admitted, and the Board, as a matter of course, 
was very genteel and very unpopular." O'Connell revolutionized all 
this. But his professional triumphs in "the beautiful city" were even 
still more splendid. His brief-bag was plethoric beyond that of any 
other "gentleman of the long robe." The great "counsellor" was an 
object of interest to curious gazers, and saluted with popular acclaim 
wherever he appeared. To anticipate a little, his son John, speaking 
in his second volume of the year 1817, has the following passage: "We 
have not alluded to Mr. O'Connell's professional career as yet in this 
f'olume, as no reports, except of the most meagre and scanty descrip- 
tion, are to be found of his bar speeches during the interval it embraces. 
His advance in the profession was great, and his income, term after 
term and circuit after circuit, greatly increasing, with a rapidity entirely 
unprecedented. Unfortunately, however, for this work, the reports of 
many and many a powerful law argument, and many an effective address 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 31S 

to juries, are so meagre and imperfect that it would be only a waste of 
the reader's time to give them in the present collection. Such of his 
forensic efforts, however, as have been recorded with any appearance of 
accuracy or due care, will, as heretofore, be found in our pages." John 
O'Connell fulfills this promise by giving only two additional " forensic 
efforts" in his unfinished and every way unsatisfactory collection of his 
father's speeches. 

I shall close this chapter with a slight notice of an odd case, in 
which our hero appeared as the champion of a poor girl against a well- 
to-do oppressor. On the 25th of May, 1813, he moved, in the Court of 
Common Pleas, for a conditional order against the Rev. William Hamil- 
ton for illegal and oppressive conduct as a magistrate of the county of 
Tipperary: "The facts of the case," said he, addressing the judges, "are 
really curious, and would be merely ludicrous but for the sufferings 
inflicted on my client. The affidavits stated that a peasant girl, named 
Hennessey, had a hen which laid — not golden eggs — but eggs strangely 
marked with red lines and figures. She, on the 21st April, 1813, 
brought her hen and eggs to the town of Eoscrea, near which she lived, 
and of which the defendant was the Protestant curate. It appeared by 
the result that she brought her eggs to a bad market, though at first 
she had some reason to think differently ; for the curiosity excited by 
those eggs attracted some attention to the owner — and as she was the 
child of parents who were miserably poor, her wardrobe was in such a 
state that she might almost literally be said to be clothed in nakedness. 
My lords, a small subscription to buy her a petticoat was suggested by 
the person who makes the present affidavit, himself a working weaver 
of the town, James Murphy — and the sum of fifteen shillings was 
speedily collected. It was a little fortune to the poor creature — she 
kissed her hen, thanked her benefactors, and with a light heart started 
on her return home. But diis aliter visum (to the gods it seemed otherwise 
fitting). At the moment two constables arrived with a warrant signed 
by the Reverend William Hamilton. This warrant charged her with 
the strange offence of a foul imposition. It would appear as if it were 
issued in some wretched jest arising from the sound not the sense. But 
it proved no joke to the girl, for she was arrested. Her hen, her eggs, 
and her fifteen shillings were taken into custody and carried before his 



320 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

worship. He was not at leisure to try the case that day. The girl was 
committed to Bridewell, where she lay a close prisoner for twenty-fom 
hours, when his reverend worship was pleased to dispose of the matter. 
Without the mockery of any trial, he proceeded at once to sentence. 
He sentenced the girl to perpetual banishment from Koscrea. He sent 
her out of the town guarded by three constables, and with positive 
injunctions never to set foot in it again. He decapitated her hen with 
his own sacred hands. He broke the eggs and confiscated the fifteen 
shillings. When the girl returned to her home — the fowl dead, the eggs 
broken, and the fifteen shillings in his reverence's pocket — one would 
suppose justice quite satisfied. But no, his worship discovered that 
Murphy had collected the offending money ; he was therefore to be 
punished. He was, indeed, first tried— but under what law think you ? 
Why, literally, my lords, under the statute of good manners. Yes, 
under that act, wherever it is to be found, was Murphy tried, convicted 
and sentenced. He was committed to Bridewell, where he lay for three 
days. The committal states 'that he was charged on oath with having 
assisted in a foul imposition on public credulity — contrary to good 
manners.' These are the words of the committal; and he was ordered 
to be detained until he should give security— ' for his good behavior.' 
Such is the ridiculous warrant on which an humble man has been 
deprived of his liberty for three clays. Such are the details given of 
the vexatious proceedings of the reverend magistrate. It was to be 
hoped that those details would turn out to be imaginary ; but they are 
sworn to — positively sworn to, and require investigation — the more espe- 
cially as motives of a highly culpable nature were attributed — he (Mr. 
O'Connell) hoped untruly attributed — to the gentleman. He was charged 
on oath with having been actuated by malice toward this wretched girl 
because she was a Catholic. It was sworn that his object was to estab- 
lish some charge of superstition against her, upon no better ground 
than this, that one of those eggs had a mark on it nearly resembling a 
cross." 

The court granted the rule applied for; but Parson Hamilton, shamed 
by this terrible exposure, managed to compromise the ugly business pri- 
vately, making compensation to the poor girl whom he had so grossly 
injured. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 321 



This was not the only odd exploit by which this eccentric parson 
distinguished himself. On the 17th of August, 1841, our hero, return- 
ing to Dublin from a Repeal meeting at Drogheda, as usual, beguiled the 
weariness of the way with pleasant conversation. He told some divert- 
ing stories of queer parsons to his friend Mr. Daunt. "He laughed 
heartily," that gentleman, in his "Personal Recollections of O'Connell," 
informs us, "at the detection of the Rev. Mr. Cramp ton in the act of 
throwing stones at his own windows-^-the reverend gentleman having 
complained of attacks upon his house, and procured the attendance of 
a party of police to protect him from the aggressions of the Popish con- 
spirators. Two of the police, who were placed on this duty, detected 
Mr. Crampton, at night, throwing stones at the windows. The reverend 
gentleman's explanation was that he did so in order to test the vigilance 
of his guard. But if he had not been caught in the fact, we probably 
should never have heard a single word of this ' ingenious device.' " 

After laughing over the Rev. Mr. Crampton' s exploit, which may be 
looked on as a sort of human counterpart of some of the sly tricks of 
"Reynard the Fox," in the old mediaeval fable of that name, O'Connell 
told Mr. Daunt a still more cunning and far-fetched contrivance of that 
edifying parson and precious justice of the peace, the thrice reverend hen- 
decapitating Hamilton. "These parsons," quoth our hero, "occasionally 
do very curious things. Several years ago, a parson at Roscrea, named 
Hamilton, dressed up a figure to represent himself, and seated it at table, 
with a pair of candles before it, and a Bible, which the pseudo-jmrson 
seemed to be intently studying. He then stole out, and fired through the 
window at the figure. It was a famous case of Popish atrocity — a pious 
and exemplary clergyman, studying the sacred Word of God, brutally 
fired at by a Popish assassin ! He tried to get a man named Egan con- 
victed of the crime, but having the temerity to appear as a witness 
himself, it came out, upon cross-examination, that the reverend divine 
was entitled to the sole and undivided glory of the transaction." 

Mr. O'Neill Daunt refers his readers to another amusing work of his 
— ' Ireland and her Agitators "—to which this biography has also been 
indebted, for full details of this singular transaction, which, he says, 
were furnished to him by a member of the Egan family. 

It was in the same conversation about comical parsons that O'Con- 



322 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

nell told Mr. Daunt the story, already given in this biography, of the 
action taken by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson Hawkesworth for 
breach of promise of marriage.* 

* The books from which 1 have drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter are, Pagan's 
" Life of O'Connell ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Personal Recollections of O'Connell ;" John Mitchel's 
"History of Ireland;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, &c, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Par- 
liament street;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.. edited, with Historical Notices, 
etc.," by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; " Grattan's Speeches ;" ' Life of the Right Reverend JohD 
Miluer, D. D.," by Dr Hnsenbuth ; Plowden. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Chequered fortunes of O'Connell and the Catholic cause in 1813 — Catholic meet- 
ings THROUGHOUT IRELAND — BITTERNESS AND FURY OF THE GOVERNMENT PRESS AGAINST 
O'CONNELL — O'CONNELL'S DAUNTLESS AND DEFIANT BEARING IN THE TEETH OF ADVERSE 
CIRCUMSTANCES — L/UDIOROUS ANECDOTE OF A TAILOR — PRESENTATION OF A SPLENDID SILVER 
CUP TO O'CONNELL BY THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE DUBLIN LIBERTIES — FALLEN CONDI- 
TION OF THE LIBERTIES — THE RUIN OF THE CATHOLIC BOARD COMMENCES WITH ARISTO- 
CRATIC secession — The breach between Henry Grattan and O'Connell grows 
wider — Government reporters at Catholic meetings — The " Knoceloftiness " of 
the earl of Donoughmore's letter — O'Connell routs a "packed" meeting of the 
beceders; ludicrous consternation of the aristocrats at O'Connell's sudden ap- 
parition AMONG THEM — THE FAMOUS RESCRIPT OF QuARANTOTTI — DlSMAY AND SUBSE- 
QUENT INDIGNATION AND HIGH SPIRIT OF THE CATHOLICS — BOLD ATTITUDE OF O'CONNELL 
AND THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE — THE POPE DISAVOWS QuARANTOTTI — UNPLEASANT AFFAIR 

of Major Bryan — A stage-struck agitator — Strange characters and queer duels 
— The vote of censure on Dr. Dromgoole — Lord Whitworth suppresses the Cath- 
olic Board by proclamation — Noble conduct of John Philpot Curran 

^HIS year, 1813, the events of which we have been relating, was 
5lM a ver y chequered one for O'Connell and the Catholic cause. 
We see him, as it advances, at one moment the defiant orator, 
the triumphant idol of the people, at another moment furiously 
assailed by the rancorous pens of a venal and thoroughly unprin- 
cipled press — the Dublin Journal, the London Courier, the Correspondent, 
the Hibernian Journal (this was one of the most virulent and pertina- 
cious of his assailants), and the Patriot (called so on the lucus a non 
lucendo principle), all yelling, as it were, at him and the Board, in full 
chorus. Already he begins to be, what he later in life so often styled 
himself, "the best abused man in the world." These papers encouraged 
the Catholic aristocracy in their unworthy secession from the Catholic 
Board, caused chiefly by the mischievous veto controversy. O'Connell 
is called a fool, is accused of delaying emancipation by his opposition to 
the " securities," is accused of setting the whole Protestant interest in 
array against the Catholic cause. Old supporters appear to be falling 
off or becoming lukewarm ; the breach between him and the illustrious 



324 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

G-rattan becomes wider ; Lord Donoughmore, too, grows cold, is inclined 
to advise a policy of inaction. O'Connell is described in a burlesque style 
by the Hibernian Journal as "Poor O'Connell . , . this Catholic hero 
. . . this Irish chieftain . . lectured by the attorney-general ;" "blub- 
bering;" "shedding tears in the most flaghoolouyhly ludicrous abun- 
dance." 

The Board, too, is at one time spreading its influence by the exer- 
tions of O'Connell and his able and eloquent associates — Scully, Finlay, 
Charles Philips and others — over counties where it had little influence 
before ; at another weakened by aristocratic secession and menaced 
with dissolution by the government. Such was the chequered history 
of O'Connell and the Irish Catholic Board through the year 1813 ; and 
it must be admitted that the outlook at the commencement of 1814 was 
gloomy enough. In short, the new year advanced without any smile of 
promise to their cause. 

O'Connell, however, was not a man to be daunted. He had faith in 
the goodness of his cause; in his friends, who, as we have seen, had 
generously rallied around him to sustain him with their sympathy and 
approval; but, above all. he had strong faith in himself. He knew that 
he had within him the energy and power sooner or later to compel Vic- 
tory to do his bidding, as Ariel obeyed Prosper©. His spirit remained 
proud and high; his bearing was still defiant and aggressive. No doubt 
his enemies deemed all this insolent and provoking to a degree; but 
what could they do, pool' devils? Chafe as they might, they had finally 
to 'grin and bear it." The brilliant Shiel, in his animated sketch of 
O'Connell, tells us: "The admirers of King William have no mercy for 
a man who, in his seditious moods, is so provoking as to tell the world 
that their idol was 'a Dutch adventurer.' Then his intolerable success 
in a profession where man}' a staunch Protestant is condemned to starve; 
and his fashionable house in Merrion Square; and, a greater eve-sore 
still, his dashing revolutionary equipage, green carriage, green liveries, 
and turbulent Popish steeds prancing over a Protestant pavement, to 
the terror of Protestant passengers, these and other provocations of 
equal publicity, have exposed this learned culprit to the deep detesta- 
tion of a numerous class of His Majesty's hating Bubjects in Ireland; 
and the feeling is duly communicated to the public: the loyal press of 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 



Dublin teems with the most astounding imputations upon his character 
and motives." Mr. Mitchel remarks amusingly on this: "The provoca- 
tion of the 'Popish horses prancing over a Protestant pavement' was 
more serious than it may now appear, for the pavement was strictly 
Protestant, and so were the street-lamps. No Catholic, though he might 
drive a coach-and-four, could be admitted upon any paving or lighting 
board in that sacred stronghold of the Ascendency, the corporation of 
Dublin." Mr. Mitchel appends an amusing story as an illustrative note 
to this passage : " It was at the height of the Catholic agitation that a 
town councillor, who was a tailor, said, at a corporation dinner : ' My 
lord, these Papists may get their emancipation, they may sit in Parlia- 
ment, they may preside upon the bench, a Papist may become lord- 
chancellor or privy-councillor, but never, never shall one of them set foot 
in the ancient and loyal Guild of Tailors.' " 

One of those instances of a people's love and appreciation, which 
are like gleams of warm sunshine amid the gloom and trials that, 
more or less, frown across the path of every man who devotes himself 
to an arduous struggle in vindication of the rights of a downtrodden 
people, occurred to cheer O'Connell amid the somewhat discouraging 
events that heralded in the year 1814. On the 14th of the January of 
that year, the manufacturers of the liberty of the city of Dublin pre- 
sented a handsome silver cup, the cunning workmanship of one Mullan 
of College Green, to our hero. On the obverse was an appropriate 
inscription; on the reverse were grouped a harp and broken chain, a 
scroll and a pen, a book and a lamp, a caduceus and a scale of justice. 
also a shield emblazoned with the armorial bearings of O'Connell. 
O'Connell received the deputation from the manufacturers in his study. 
His two boys, Maurice and Morgan, stood beside him and shook hands 
with the Dublin artisans. The address to our hero, signed J. Talbot 
and C. Dowdal, speaking of the gift and givers, contained these and 
other words: "It is but the widow's mite; yet they [the givers) hope 
not less acceptable, as it overflows with their affections." They wished 
him long life also. O'Connell replied with grateful warmth ; he told 
them that their country was " widowed, too," that the independence of 
'82 gave Ireland manufactures and freedom ; that independence alone 
could revive both. " My gratitude to the manufacturers," said he, "will 



326 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

be best evinced, if I can awake the people of Ireland to hope for a 
repeal of the union!" TTe learn from his son that, in addition to what 
he said in his more formal reply, " he declared, in allusion to their sub- 
sisting custom of toast-giving, that no toast should ever be drunk out 
of it, save ' the repeal of the union.'' " John O'Connell adds truly enough, 
in his clumsy, long-winded style, that " It is a melancholy thing to 
reflect upon, that, low and poverty-stricken as was the condition of that 
extensive district, entitled 'The Liberty' of Dublin city, it has long 
since fallen much lower, and, indeed, declined into utter ruin. The 
time is many a year ago gone by, when such a presentation could be 
repeated as that which we record; and 'The Liberty' which, daring the 
Irish Parliament, was the focus of active and most remunerative manu- 
facturing employment of various descriptions, is now, and has for a long- 
time been known only as the focus of the last and uttermost wretched- 
ness and helpless destitution." 

The secession of the aristocracy, somewhat before this period, was 
the commencement of the ruin of the Catholic Board. This secession 
was chiefly occasioned by the misunderstandings on the vexatious ques- 
tion of the veto. Lords Fingal and Trimleston, and other aristocratic 
Catholics, were eager supporters of Grattan' 8 bill. They shared in the 
indignation which that great Irishman felt at the opposition which 
O'Connell and his followers gave to "the securities" in every shape and 
form. Grattan and Lord Donoughmore being on bad terms with tin- 
Board, the breach between the two sections of the Catholic party was 
sure to glow still wider. On the 8th of January, on the motion of 
O'Connell, the letters of Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan, already 
referred to, were read. They did not contribute to the production of a 
bettor feeling. O'Connell made a nervous speech, in which he expressed 
something very like indignation at both letters. He was especially sore 
about that of Grattan. ■ AN hat securities did he [Grattan) ever speak of 
in the Irish Parliament?" O'Connell manfully denied that the Catholics 
had any natural " inferiority" to their Protestant countrymen. At the 
elose of this meeting, the eccentric Barney Coile pointed out to O'Con- 
nell a person, apart from the other reporters, taking notes of the proceed- 
ings. All eyes were speedily turned in the direction of the stranger, 
who admitted that he was employed by the police authorities, and said 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 32V 

" that he acted solely by the command of his superiors, and sincerel} 7 
hoped he should not be held to have thereby forfeited the regard of 
others." O'Connell said, "That was all perfectly fair," and promised 
to have at the next meeting a desk or table large enough to accommo- 
date as many as the police should think fit to send. On this conduct 
of our hero his son thus observes: "Thirty or forty times at least, during 
the course of his agitation, similar occasions have arisen for similar 
steps on his part — greatly to the disappointment and discomfiture of 
the authorities he showed such readiness to oblige." Sometimes Eng- 
lishmen, who would be sent over to watch the proceedings of the Catho- 
lics, would arrive in Ireland with the full conviction that they were 
doomed never to escape alive out of that turbulent land of cut-throats ; 
they would surely be assassinated by some members of the terrible con- 
federacy, over which the lightest word of the arch-rebel O'Connell was 
law. Gradually they would come to see that it was possible for an 
Englishman to preserve a whole skin in Ireland; and if they had a 
more than usual share of candor, they would finally confess that they 
had been fools. 

It was in this year, 1814, that O'Connell delivered that speech, in 
which he made the amusing use of Esop's fable of the wolves and sheep 
to overthrow Counsellor Stephen Woulfe's able argument in favor of the 
veto, that I have already referred to in Chapter the Twelfth. Mr. Daunt 
says (I think rightly) that this incident occurred at a meeting at 
Limerick ; John O'Connell states that it took place at Clare. Be this 
as it may, in this speech O'Connell again referred to the course pursued 
by Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan. He says that Mr. Woulfe 
brings an "indictment," in which there are "four counts" against the 
Board. "It charges the Board, . . . Thirdly, with having made an 
unnecessary and virulent attack on Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan ; 
and — 

" Fourthly, with having been guilty of a pun. [Laughter.) . . .This 
has the merit of comicality. ... A public body accused of a joke ! a 
public body charged with being miserably witty ! Oh, most wise, most 
sapient accusers ! . . . He, Mr. Lawless, talked of the ' Knockloftiness ' 
of the style of a certain letter." Knocklofty is the name of Lord 
Donoughmore's place. O'Connell adds, immediately after, that Mr. 



328 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



Lawless borrowed this "'unfortunate witticism' from ' The Belfast 
Magazine' 1 and retailed it to the Board at second-hand." O'Connell con- 
cludes this speech in these words — "and in that sacred cause" (that of 
"unqualified emancipation") "let the watchword be unanimity for old 
Ireland!" 

The following entertaining passage from the " Keminiscences of a 
Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy, published in the Irish Monthly 
Magazine, a periodical defunct many years since, gives a vivid picture 
of some of the proceedings of the aristocratic seceders from the Catholic 
Board in or about the period I am now writing of: 

" The time at length came when the maturing strength of the second 
order grew so obnoxious to the fastidious tastes of the Corinthians that 
a secession from the democratic conventions was resolved on ; and the 
Catholic aristocracy formed itself into a Praetorian band under the title 
of Seceders. Their secretary was Le Chevalier 'De McCarthy, brother 
to the count of the same name/ who derives his patent of nobility — 
like the knights who were slain by the princess Rusty Fusty in 
O'Keefe's farce — from the 'Holy Eoman Empire;' and their hall of 
assembly was the drawing-room in the mansion of a nobleman (Lord 
Trimleston) — a most appropriate place for the means and ends they 
possessed and entertained. Circulars were directed to those belonging 
to the Catholic body who were considered entitled to the private entire 
of Lord Trimleston's saloon; and some meetings were held by those 
political exclusives, where speeches were delivered and resolutions 
passed without subjecting the eloquent declaimers to those occasional 
interruptions, which in mixed assemblies are rudely offered, expressive 
of applause. Too polite to be personal in their allusions to the political 
opponents of the cause, they were also too refined in their selection of 
language to be either spirited or independent in their sentiments; and 
when they touched upon the feeling of the civil degradation which they 
were enduring, it was calculated more to excite compassion for their 
privations than applause for the indignant sense of wrong they should 
have displayed. The proceedings of the Seceders would have passed 
away like any other drawing-room amusements, commencing with 
politics and ending with a promenade, were it not that they took upon 
themselves to act for the people, and to assume a sort of dictation in 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ' 329 



their cause. This was not to be endured, and at their next meeting 
the uninvited O'Connell was resolved to appear — 

" ' In their own halls I'll brave them.' 

" The Seceders appointed a committee to prepare an address to the 
prince-regent, and also agreed on a petition to Parliament, in the spring 
of the year 1814; all which transactions emanated from Lord Trim- 
leston's drawing-room. At the latter end of March, a circular was issued 
by Le Chevalier Be McCarthy, their secretary of state, to those who 
were supposed to sanction the secession, inviting them to attend, for the 
purpose of ' hearing the report of the committee appointed to prepare 
the address to his royal highness the prince-regent, and to receive a 
communication from the earl of Donoughmore.' The chevalier also 
requested that ' you would be so good as to mention this, with my com- 
pliments, to those of your acquaintance who have signed the petition 
adopted on the 23d February.' All those who still adhered to the Cath- 
olic Board (the model of the association) were passed over, and the 
seceders imagined that, as the meeting was to take place in the man- 
sion of a nobleman, no tribune of the people would dare to intrude 
upon their privacy or present himself at the portals uninvited. Wrapped 
in all the confidence of security from such a visitation, the members of 
this Aulic Council assembled to deliberate upon their snail-pace progress 
and to prepare their forces for their inoffensive warfare. In the midst 
of their proceedings, a loud knock at the hall-door startled the slumber- 
ing echoes in Trimleston House and attracted the attention of its draw- 
ing-room convention. The noble president looked embarrassed ; the 
hectic of a moment passed over his cheek, but did not tarry. The 
knock was both loud and long, and terminated in a climax of sound : a 
general presentiment seemed to pervade the assembly that there was 
but one person who would have the audacity to demand admittance in 
that manner. The chevalier, more courageous than the rest, rose from 
his place at the table and went to reconnoitre from a position on the 
staircase, and returned with a hurried step to his seat, whispering to 
those who were immediately around him something which did not seem 
to relieve their suspense. The chevalier had scarcely taken his pen into 
his hand when the door opened and O'Connell advanced to the table. 



330 THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

It would require a lengthened report to convey an idea of the debate 
which ensued; or perhaps the pencil of a Hogarth could best describe 
the effect of the scene — the expression of impatience and vexation which 
lowered on the brows of his auditors, contrasted with the look of scorn- 
ful rebuke which he cast upon them, one and all — the haughty tone with 
which he interrogated them, why they dared to take upon themselves to 
act for the Catholic people of Ireland., and to exclude from their meet- 
ings those belonging to that people who were their superiors in every 
attribute. Dismayed and humiliated, the Seceders never after ventured 
to assemble; and whether his royal highness received the contemplated 
address, or whether the earl of Donoughmore's epistle was replied to, 
are matters I have not been able to ascertain. As a body, they were 
as effectually dissolved as the Council of Five Hundred was — with this 
difference, that moral influence alone completed in the one case what 
the direction of military force achieved in the other. The next step the 
Seceders took was to secede from a secession, and, as the Irish watchman 
once said to a nocturnal disturber, 'Disperse yourself,'' each retired within 
the glittering shell of his title or his opulence, and, like snails, they left 
no memorial but the slime of their jiroceedings to record them." 

The writer of the foregoing lively sketch is not quite correct in say- 
ing that the meeting at Lord Trimleston's was the last effort on the part 
of the Seceders or vetoists to speak in the name of the people of Ireland. 
I shall, before long, have to notice a similar packed meeting of this 
clique, in which, it appears to me, they presumed to, or at least would 
fain have, put themselves forward as speaking in the name of Catholic 
Ireland. But, first, it is necessary to give a concise account of the 
celebrated rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti. 

It was witli an indescribable horror that O'Connell and his Catholic 
countrymen read in an English paper, on May the 3d, the following an- 
nouncement: " We have just heard from unquestionable authority thai 
the first act of the pope, on his re-establishment at Rome, was to pass 
in full consistory, with the cardinals unanimously agreeing, an arrange- 
ment giving to the British Crown the desired security respecting the 
nomination of Catholic bishops." 

At once the belief spread like wildfire that not merely the prelates, 
who had been appointed to administer ecclesiastical affairs at Koine 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 331 



while the pope was a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon, had given 
their approval to the "securities" of Grattan's bill of the preceding 
year, but that Pius the Seventh himself had assented to them also. 
This appeared the more probable, as His Holiness was naturally grateful 
to the allied powers, England included, which, by turning the tide of 
conquest and invasion against the great emperor after his disastrous 
retreat from Leipzig, in 1813, had brought about the pontiff's release 
from captivity. All the apprehensions, however, of the Irish Catholics 
seemed to be fully justified, when, on the 5th of May, 1814, the copy of 
a letter, bearing the signature of "Monsignor Quarantotti, vice-prefect 
of Koine," appeared in the Dublin Evening Post. While those, who were 
hostile or indifferent to the freedom of the Catholic Church in Ireland 
from the corrupting influences of the British Crown, were satisfied, if not 
exulting, the real friends both of Catholic and Irish liberty were stricken 
with dismay; for Quarantotti' s rescript expressed entire approval, not 
merely of Grattan's bill, but of Canning's clauses. The Catholics, ac- 
cording to this precious document, ought "to receive and embrace the 
bill with a grateful spirit." 

It may be as well to give some passages from this memorable docu- 
ment. It was addressed to "The Right Eev. William Poynter," vicar 
apostolic of the London district. Of this prelate, who, so far from being 
an opponent to the veto, had remained pitifully silent while the learned 
and admirable Dr. Milner was brutally insulted in his presence by the 
English vetoists, O'Connell humorously said, that "he was a poor crea- 
ture, who should be called Spaniel, instead of Poynter." This was cer- 
tainly hard hitting at the English Catholic primate ; but then our un- 
compromising Dan was no respecter of persons, and he seldom troubled 
himself with measuring his words very scrupulously. Returning to the 
rescript, it says : 

"As to the desire of the government to be informed of the loyalty 
of those who are promoted to the dignity of bishop or dean, and to be 
assured that they possess those qualifications which belong to a faithful 
subject ; as tc the intention, also, of forming a board for the ascertain- 
ment of those points, by inquiring into the character of those who shall 
be presented, and reporting thereon to the king, according to the tenor 
of your lordship's letter; and, finally, as to the determination of govern- 



332 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ment to have none admitted to those dignities who either are not nat- 
ural-born subjects, or who have not been residents in the kingdom for 
four j'ears preceding, — as all these provisions regard matters that are 
merely political, they are entitled to all indulgence. It is better, indeed, 
that the prelates of our Church should be acceptable to the king, in order 
that they may exercise their ministry with his full concurrence, and also 
that there may be no doubts of their integrity, even with those who are 
not in the bosom of the Church; for 'it behoveth a bishop' (as the 
apostle teaches, 1 Tim. iii. 7) 'even to have a good witness from those 
who are not of the Church.' Upon these principles we, in virtue of the 
authority entrusted to us, grant permission that those who are elected to 
and proposed for bishoprics and deaneries by the clergy may be admitted 
or rejected by the king, according to the law proposed. When, therefore, 
the clergy shall have, according to the usual custom, elected those whom 
they shall judge most worthy in the Lord to possess those dignities, the 
metropolitan of the province in Ireland, or the senior vicar-apostolic of 
England and Scotland, shall give notice of the election, that the king's 
approbation or dissent may be hud thereupon. If the candidates he 
rejected, others shall be proposed who may he acceptable to the king; 
but if approved of, the metropolitan or vicar-apostolic, ;is above, shall 
send the documents to the Sacred Congregation here, the members 
whereof, having duly weighed the merits of each, shall take measures 
for the attainment of canonical institution from His Holiness. 1 per- 
ceive, also, that another duty is ass fined to the board above mentioned — 
namely, that they are charged to inspect all letters written by the eccle- 
siastical power to any of the British clergy, and examine carefully 
whether they contain anything which may be injurious to the govern- 
ment or anywise disturb the public tranquillity. Inasmuch as a com- 
munication on ecclesiastical or spiritual affairs with the head of the 
Church is not forbidden, and as the inspection of the board relates to 
political subjects only, this also must be submitted to. It is right that 
the government should not have cause to entertain any suspicion with 
regard to the communication between us. What we write will bear the 
eyes of the world, for wc intermeddle not with matters of a political 
nature, but arc occupied about those things which the divine and the 
ecclesiastical law, and the good order of the Chinch, appear to require. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 333 

Those matters only are to be kept under the seal of silence which per- 
tain to the jurisdiction of conscience within us ; and of this it appears 
to me sufficient care has been taken in the clauses of the law alluded to. 
We are perfectly convinced that so wise a government as that of Great 
Britain, while it studies to provide for the public security, does not on 
that account wish to compel the Catholics to desert their religion, but 
would rather be pleased that they should be careful observers of it ; for 
our holy and truly divine religion is most favorable to public authority, 
is the best support of thrones, and the most powerful teacher both of 
loyalty and patriotism." 

Such was the famous Rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti that created 
the most astounding hubbub all through Catholic Ireland. Indignation, 
the most furious, soon took the place of the feelings of dismay, which, 
on the first arrival of the news, had struck a chill to the heart of every 
Catholic, who was also a true Irishman. Priests and people were alike 
raging against " 'Mr. Forty-eight,' as the irrepressible tendency to jest- 
ing" {I am borrowing the words of John O'Connell), "in the Irish Catho- 
lic, had already christened him {Quarantotti), in allusion to a wild stoiy 
about the derivation of his patronymic, said to have been from the 
number of a lucky lottery-ticket that had made his father's fortune." 
He was represented, in the caricatures of the day, as bending under a 
huge hamper, which he was bringing into the presence of His Holiness. 
The hamper was crammed with the mitres of Irish bishops, huddled 
together confusedly; while George the Third, with covetous eye, was 
standing in a corner eagerly stretching forth his hands to grasp the 
mitres. Irish priests, who remembered having seen Quarantotti at 
Eome in their student days, described him as a dunce. As the English 
papers took care to represent him as a cardinal, the fact that he was 
only a prelate was dwelt on in Ireland with some satisfaction. At a 
later period, indeed, he received a cardinal's hat ; but in mean time the 
Irish were glad in any way to lower his pretensions. 

Nothing could equal the disgust and rage with which Irishmen, both 
lay and clerical, read the praises of the English government in this 
rescript. Thomas Kennedy, in his "Reminiscences of a Silent Agi- 
tator," says : " One of the proudest and most gratifying recollections of 
the agitators is connected with the dignified resistance which the Irish 



334 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 



Catholic Church gave to the interference of the papal throne." I shall 
give some extracts, which John O'Connell quotes from the letter of "An 
Irish Priest," in order to show the spirit in which Quarantotti's rescript 
was at once met. This letter appeared in the Dublin Evening Post the 
day after that document had been given. 

" The ferment spread like wildfire through every gradation of society, 
and the very lowest order of people felt its influence. Some cursed — 
others moaned — all complained. Early this morning my old servant- 
maid, without waiting for any commands of mine, accosted me abruptly 
with these words : ' Oh, sir ! what shall we do ? Is it — can it be true 
that the pope has turned Orangeman V 

" I must beg to correct two material mistakes of yours. . . . The 
document is not from His Holiness Pius the Seventh. . . . Nor is there 
a word to indicate any sort of consent or approbation from him or any 
one of his cardinals. Quarantotti refers to no authority but his own. . . . 
A clerk to the Congregation of the Propaganda presumes to decide on a 
subject of the greatest magnitude, and which would require the delibera- 
tion not only of the whole Congregation and of the pope himself, with 
his whole College of Cardinals, but of an entire (Ecumenical Council. 
Nay, as it appertains to local discipline, that (Ecumenical Council itself 
could not compel us to submit — much less an understrapper of the 
Propaganda." The " Irish Priest" then amuses himself with some criti- 
cism on the Latinity of the rescript. He also finds fault with the channel 
through which Quarantotti thought proper to make so important an 
announcement — through an English vicar apostolic, instead of, at all 
events, addressing it to the ancient and regularly constituted hierarchy 
of Ireland. He concludes by saying : " Every attempt to weaken the 
Catholic Church shall in the end prove fruitless ; and as long as the 
shamrock shall adorn our island, so long shall the faith delivered to us 
by St. Patrick prevail; in despite of kings, parliaments, Orangemen 
and Quarantottis." 

Meanwhile the opinion began to spread that this odious rescript had 
been issued by this preposterous Quarantotti solely on his own respon- 
sibility. It seemed possible even that the pope had been completely 
ignorant of the whole transaction, which it has since been stated was 
the result of the secret intrigues of Lord William Bentinck in Rome. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 335 

The document was dated the 16th of February, while the liberation of 
His Holiness from his French captivity did not take place till the 2d 
of April. No wonder, then, that the resentment against the presump- 
tuous prelate and the resistance to his audacious rescript grew stronger 
each day. 

On the 12th of May, at a meeting of the parish priests and other 
clergymen of the archdiocese of Dublin, held in Bridge Street Chapel, 
the following resolutions were adopted, as a duty the clergy present 
owed "to God and to their flocks :" 

"Resolved, that we consider the document or rescript, signed 'Quar- 
antotti,' as non-obligatory upon the Catholic Church in Ireland, particu- 
larly as it wants those authoritative marks whereby the mandates of 
the Holy See are known and recognized, and especially the signature of the 
pope. 

"That we consider the granting to an anti-Catholic government any 
power, either direct or indirect, with regard to the appointment and nom- 
ination of the Catholic bishops in Ireland, as at all times inexpedient. 

"That, circumstanced as we are in this country, we consider the 
granting of such a power not only inexpedient, but highly detrimental 
to the best and dearest interests of religion, and pregnant with incalcu- 
lable mischief to the cause of Catholicity in Ireland. 

"That such arrangements of domestic nominations can be made 
among the clergy of Ireland as will preclude that foreign influence 
against which those securities, so destructive to religion, are called for 
by the Parliament." 

The clergy then respectfully call on their "venerable archbishop," in 
conjunction with the other Irish prelates, to remonstrate "with His 
Holiness and the sacred College of Cardinals" against "this document," 
and to represent the evils which "the adoption of the principles laid 
down" in it would "inevitably" bring on the Catholic Church in Ire- 
land. The signatures of all the priests " at that moment in the city of 
Dublin," some of which (those, for instance, of Dr. Blake, subsequently 
bishop of Dromore, who presided over the meeting, Father Walter 
Myler, Father Yore, etc.) were familiar names in Dublin up to a com- 
paratively recent date, were appended to these resolutions. 

Meanwhile the columns of all the Catholic and liberal journals, with 



336 TIIE L1FF 0F DANIEL O'COXXELL. 



(according to John O'Connell) but one exception, were flaming with the 
widespread and still-increasing indignation. This expression of the 
public fury by the newspapers was sanctioned by numerous letters 
from ecclesiastics, full of strong denunciations of unfortunate Quaran- 
totti. Dr. Coppinger, bishop of Cloyne, writing to the Dublin Evening 
Post of May the 14th, styles "Mr. Quarantotti's decree'" a "very mis- 
chievous document," and adds, "In common with every real friend to the 
integrity of the Catholic religion in Ireland, I read it with feelings of 
disgust and indignation." Dr. Barry, the then bishop of Dromore, was 
equally strong against it; and, a few days later, the Eight Rev. Dr. 
O'Shaughnessy wrote : "The result of this pernicious document, if acted 
upon, would be fatal to the Catholic religion ; therefore I hasten to pro- 
test against it, and while I have breath in my body will continue to do 
so." The Limerick Evening Post, on the 9th of May, argued that if 
Canning's clauses, -approved of at Rome," became the law of the land, 
Burke's observation would be fulfilled: "The influence of the Crown 
has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." This Lim- 
erick journal asks, on the same supposition, "How stand the liberties 
of the Protestant, the Presbyterian, and the sectary of every description 
throughout Ireland? How stand the civil liberties of the Catholics 
themselves? Very badly, we are sure." 

At a meeting of the Board, held at Fitzpatrick's, in Capel street 
(the Board was now in debt; probably Fitzpatrick gave them the place 
of meeting free of charge), O'Connell called the rescript, "The attempt 
made by the slaves of Rome to instruct the Irish Roman Catholics upon 
the manner of their emancipation." He also, at this meeting, made 
the following bold and emphatic declaration : "I would as soon receive 
my politics from Constantinople as from Rome. For the head of my 
Church I have the highest respect, but in the present case I put the- 
ology — of which I know nothing, and desire to know nothing — out of 
my consideration wholly. It is on the ground of its danger to civil 
liberty that I objected to the late bill. It would have the effect, if passed 
into a law, of placing in the hands of the minister a new and extensive 
source of patronage; and, for that reason, I would rather the Catholics 
should remain for ever without emancipation than that they should 
receive it upon such tenuis!" Be disapproved of the idea of an address 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 337 

to Lord Whitworth, and moved that a committee should he appointed to 
prepare resolutions for an aggregate meeting. This motion was carried 
unanimously. 

Accordingly, on the 19th of May, at the Farming Repository, Ste- 
phen's Green (an inconvenient place), this aggregate meeting of the 
Catholics took place. Thomas Wyse, Jun., Esq., took the chair. This 
gentleman was subsequently distinguished for his eloquence and for the 
authorship of the " History of the Catholic Association." After eman- 
cipation, he was for some years member for Waterford city. Finally, 
created Sir Thomas Wise, he became British ambassador at Athens. 
His sentiments on religious matters were not merely tolerant, but 
occasionally what some might deem a trifle too comprehensive ; at least, 
on one occasion, he exclaimed, at a public meeting attended by persons 
of various sects, "Ah ! sure we're all of the same religion." Sir Thomas 
had the honor of being husband to a niece of the great Napoleon. As 
the lady, however, had some share of the arbitrary temper of her impe- 
rial uncle, it may be doubted whether Sir Thomas's domestic felicity 
was at all proportionate to the honor he derived from so illustrious an 
alliance. 

The sentiments uttered at this meeting were exceedingly bold. "How 
dare Quarantotti dictate to the people of Ireland?" exclaimed O'Connell. 
" We disclaim his authority to interfere in making us accept of an act 
of Parliament. He desires us to be grateful for it. How dare he talk 
of gratitude to us ? By his orders we are to accept it as beggars — like 
aliens, with our hats in our hands and a submissive bend of the body! 
Never will we obey such orders; we will as much allow his right to inter- 
fere with the act of Parliament as we will allow the king or the king's 
ministers to interfere with the appointment of the prelates of the Catholic 
religion in Ireland." John O'Connell tells us that the speech delivered 
by his father on this occasion was very imperfectly reported. " It had 
three chief points: first, a protest against the recent steps taken in 
favor of the veto ; next, a vindication of the conduct of" the clergy of 
Dublin, and " an expression of confidence that the hierarchy would soon 
fulminate against it" [the veto or rescript) ; " and finally, a contemptuous 
and indignant comment upon some peculiarly bigoted and peculiarly 
absurd anti-Catholic resolutions of several countv crand-juries." Talk- 



338 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

ing of those of the Deny and Wicklow grand-juries, our hero says: 
" Let them be treated as Lord Avonmore once treated a barrister, who 
had been two hours speaking for a rich man against a widow and tsvo 
orphans. When he had done, his lordship's reply was, ' I know you 
well, Moll Doyle !' Let our answer be, ' I know you well, Moll Doyle !' " 
(Laughter.) He then speaks of the grand -juries of Antrim, Armagh and 
Wexford. Apparently, the magnates of the last county had accused the 
Board of treason or sedition, or both. I shall give O'Connell's remarks 
on this charge without comment. He sneers at the inconsistency, bad 
grammar and ignorance of the " sweet county Wexford gentlemen," and 
then says : " Can any one point out an instance of treason or sedition 
in this country since the first formation of the Catholic Board, or a 
single person who was brought to trial, or even accused ? Oh ! yes, 
there were three. Two of the unfortunate persons were detected by the 
Catholic Board ; they were handed over to the government, who did not 
choose to prosecute. You all, no doubt, remember what I allude to — 
Paddy McKew's plot. The other was a man in Limerick, whom I my- 
self prosecuted for swearing a person to support the French on their 
landing in Ireland; but the grand-jury ignored the bills, and let the 
gentleman at large." O'Connell concluded by moving certain resolu- 
tions, which were carried unanimously. His son gives what he calls 
"the pith and marrow" of these resolutions: 

"Resolved, thai we deem it a duty to ourselves and to our country 
solemnly and distinctly to declare, that any decree, mandate, rescript or 
decision whatsoever of any foreign power or authority, religious or civil, 
ought not, and run not of right, assume any dominion or control over the 
political concerns of the Catholics of Ireland. 

"Resolved, that the venerable and venerated the Catholic pinests of 
the archdiocese of Dublin have deserved our most marked and cordial 
gratitude, as well for the uniform tenor of their sanctified lives, as in 
particular for the holy zeal and alacrity with which, at the present period 
of general alarm and consternation, they have consoled the people •>!' 
Ireland, by the public declaration of their sentiments respecting the, 
mischievous document signed B. Quarantotti, and disposed them to await 
with confidence the decision of our revered prelates at the approaching 
synod. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OONNELL. 339 



"Resolved, that we do most earnestly and respectfully Vieseech our 
revered prelates to take into consideration, at the approaching synod, the 
propriety of for ever precluding any public danger either of ministerial 
or foreign influence in the appointment of our prelates." 

Other speakers besides O'Connell took a conspicuous part in the 
proceedings at this meeting. Dr. Dromgoole, though at this time the 
relations between him and the majority of the members of tne Board 
were of a somewhat unpleasant nature, rose to announce "that he had 
authority for stating that the sanction of their venerable archbishop, 
Dr. Troy, had been attached to the resolutions of their parish priests." 
The learned doctor's announcement was received with acclamations by 
the crowded assembly. Catholic respectability and Catholic talent were 
never better represented than at this meeting. More charming still, the 
presence of a number of beautiful women, full of the enthusiasm of the 
hour, added to the interest of the scene. What wonder if the ardor of 
the speakers was all aglow! The spirit and animation of the meeting 
were at their highest when Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman exclaimed, "If 
the pope himself, with all his cardinals in full council, issued a bull to 
the effect of the rescript, I should not obey." Shouts of applause thun- 
dered from every quarter of the room. " I suppose I should thereby 
cease to be a Catholic," resumed O'Gorman. "No, no!" eagerly inter- 
rupted Dr. Dromgoole. "I am glad," O'Gorman added, "that I may 
resist the pope and council, and still be a member of the Catholic 
Church!" 

All was unanimity. The learned Clinche and his rival, the equally 
learned Dromgoole, spoke at considerable length, but this day all rivalry 
between them was buried, save an emulation of zeal against the pre- 
sumptuous rescript of Quarantotti. Besides the Catholic orators, Prot- 
estant advocates of the Catholic cause were listened to with applause — 
the able Counsellor Finlay, the more eloquent Charles Philips. 

But the excitement against Quarantotti did not terminate with this 
meeting. The Catholic bishops of Ireland agreed to the following pro- 
test on the 27th of May, after a conference of two days at Maynooth : 

"Resolved, that a congratulatory letter be addressed to His Holiness 
Pius the Seventh, on his happy liberation from captivity. 

" Resolved, that having; taken into our mature consideration the late 



340 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

rescript of the vice-prefect of the Propaganda, we are fully convinced 
that it is not mandatory. 

" Resolved, that we do now open a communication with the Holy See 
on the subject of this document ; and that, for this purpose, two prelates 
be forthwith deputed to convey our unanimous and well-known senti- 
ments to the chief pastor, from whose wisdom, zeal and tried magna- 
nimity we have reason to expect such decision as will give general 
satisfaction. 

"Resolved, that the two last resolutions be respectfully communicated 
to the right honorable the earl of Donoughmore, and to the Eight Hon. 
Henry Grattan, with an earnest entreaty that, when the question of 
Catholic emancipation shall be discussed in Parliament, they will exert 
their powerful talents in excluding from the bill, intended for our relief, 
those clauses which we have already deprecated as severely penal to us 
and highly injurious to our religion." 

John O'Connell, after quoting these resolutions, adds, that "the 
unsatisfactory correspondence between the Catholic Board and Lord 
Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan continued in the same mixed style of 
compliment and remonstrance until early in June, when, without warn- 
ing to those who had entrusted him with the Catholic petition to the 
lower House, and without consultation with any one, Mr. Grattan, when 
presenting the petition, announced that it was not his intention to bring 
forward the Catholic claims that session." 

The Catholic Board were about to consider this unexpected event, 
when an occurrence still more startling, of which I shall take notice 
before I bring this chapter to a conclusion, stopped or prevented their 
deliberations. 

Not long after the events just related, Cardinal Gonsalvi arrived in 
London on a secret mission. His Eminence made the following declara- 
tion to the Right Rev. Dr. Moylan, bishop of Cork: "Until 1 came to 
England, 1 assure you, I never heard of Quarantotti's rescript I en- 
tirely disapprove of it, and shall use all my influence, on my return to 
Rome, to prevent its being sanctioned by His Holiness, should such a 
thing be in contemplation." Yet, at a subsequent period, O'Connell so 
tar distrusted this Cardinal Gonsalvi, whose "terrible superhuman" 
eyes, whose "rich robes and diamond buckles," whose ••line figure and 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 341 

countenance and magnificent costume," whose French phrases, worthy 
of a native, "epigrammatic and well-turned," are so graphically described 
by Lady Morgan, in her "Book of the Boudoir," as to accuse him of 
having "betrayed or sold" the Irish Catholic Church at Vienna for 
"eleven thousand guineas." In truth, for a long period after this affair 
of Quarantotti the majority of the Catholics of Ireland were kept in a 
state of continual suspense and anxiety. The aristocratic section were 
supposed to be constantly intriguing in favor of the veto, while the pop- 
ular party, assisted by the clergy and hierarchy, vigorously contended 
against it. Spirited declarations from the hierarchy in favor of the 
independence of the Church, from time to time, elicited the gratitude of 
the people. Dr. Murray, the coadjutor archbishop of Dublin, was sent 
to Rome as bearer of a strong remonstrance from the prelates. But the 
influence of England in the city of the pontiffs was, at the time, so strong 
as to prevent any regard from being paid to it, and Dr. Murray had to 
return without having advanced the object of his mission. At a meet- 
ing of the prelates the following energetic resolution, amongst others, was 
adopted : " Though we sincerely venerate the supreme pontiff as visible 
head of the Church, we do not conceive that our apprehensions for the 
safety of the Koman Catholic Church in Ireland can or ought to be 
removed by any determination of His Holiness, adopted, or intended to 
be adopted, not only without our concurrence, but in direct opposition 
to our repeated resolutions and the very energetic memorial presented 
on our behalf, and so ably supported by our deputy, the Most Rev. Dr. 
Murray, who, in that quality, was more competent to inform His Holi- 
ness of the real state and interests of the Roman Catholic Church in 
Ireland than any other with whom he is said to have consultecV Mr. 
Mitchel tells us that "this last phrase meant the emissaries of the Eng- 
lish Catholics, then busy at Rome;" and he adds, that "the English 
Catholics have been at all times as zealous and resolute to keep Ireland 
subject to English dominion in all respects, as any : no-Popery' Briton 
or Orange grand-master could be." Bearing with him the resolutions 
of the prelates, Dr. Murray returned to Rome, accompanied by the bishop 
of Cork. Meanwhile the excitement and the spirit of resistance to all 
attempts to fetter the independence of the Irish national Church, no 
matter from what quarter they might arise, remained as strong and 



342 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

stubborn as ever. All through the struggle O'Connell was the guiding 
spirit of the people. 

"I remember well," says another writer, "years after all discussion 
upon the veto had subsided, when I was in Paris on a visit at the house 
of a friend of the doctor's and my own, he suddenly dropped in, just 
after his arrival from Eome. I had not seen him for a considerable time, 
but I had scarcely asked him how he was, when he reverted to the veto. 
A debate was immediately opened on the subject. Some Irish gentle- 
men dropped casually in ; they all took their share in the argument ; 
the eloquence of the different disputants became inflamed. The win- 
dows towards the streets had been left unhappily open ; a crowd of 
Frenchmen collected outside, and the other inhabitants of the house 
gathered at the doors to hear the discussion. It was only after the 
doctor, who was still under the influence of vetophobia, had taken his 
leave, that I perceived the absurdity of the incident. A volume of ' Gil 
Bias' was on the tabic where we happened to have assembled, and by 
accident I lighted on the passage in which he describes the Irish dis- 
putants at Salamanca: Je rencontrois quelquefois des figures Hihemoises. 
II falloit nous coir disputer, etc.'* We are a strange people, and deserve 
our reputation at the foreign universities, where it was said of the Irish 
that they were ratione furentes" [raging with reason). 

And so the old scholastic philosopher, who, when not disturbed by 
the veto, was one of the mildest and best-natured of men, died far away 
from old Ireland, beneath "the shadow of the Vatican.'' 

I shall now return to the point of my narrative from which I turned 
back to relate the episode of Major Bryan and Dr. Dromgoole. On the 
3d of June, 1814, the English government, now at length victorious 
over their great imperial enemy, who, reduced to a phantom royalty in 
the little island of Elba, seemed more an object of mockery than terror, 
felt themselves secure enough to strike a sudden and startling blow at 
the Catholic movement. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. O'Con- 
nell had arrived in the Board-room. Gradually members dropped in to 

* Here is the whole passage, translated by Smollet, I believe: "I sometimes met with some 
Irishmen, who loved disputing as well as myself, and we made rare work of it. Lord, what grim- 
aces! What gestures ! Fire sparkled in our eyes, and we always foamed at the mouth. Every 
one that saw us ought to have taken us rather for madmen than philosophers." 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 343 

the n amber of sixteen. As the clock strikes four, a messenger rushes 
in in hot haste and hands our hero a viceregal proclamation. Appeal- 
ing to the Convention Act, this document declares the Catholic Board 
an unlawful assembly, though artifice had been employed to make it 
appear lawful. The law, indeed, was not enforced sooner " against the 
said assembly, in the expectation that those who had been misled by 
such artifice would become sensible of their error," and that the Board 
"would be discontinued without the necessity of legal interposition." 
The viceroy, being satisfied "that the further continuance of said assem- 
bly can only tend to serve the ends of factious and seditious persons 
and to the violation of the public peace," cautions "all such of His 
Majesty's subjects as are members of the said assembly" to abstain 
from any further attendance at or on it. If they defy the proclamation, 
they must expect to be prosecuted. 

When O'Connell had read aloud, in deep, unwavering tones, this 
tyrannical proclamation, he declared it illegal, that it outstripped the 
authority conferred on government by the Convention Act. If twenty- 
three members of the Board — the number requisite for that purpose — 
had assembled, he would have proceeded with the meeting. As that 
number failed to arrive, those present determined to hold the next meet- 
ing at O'Connell's house, in Merrion Square. There it was resolved to 
abstain, for the present, from assembling the Catholic Board, but to lose 
no time in summoning an aggregate meeting of Catholics. 

This meeting assembled on the 11th of June. Spirited resolutions 
were passed. The Board had advocated Catholic rights and proclaimed 
Catholic wrongs "with truth and eloquent earnestness." Owing to its 
efforts "the friends of religious freedom" had increased, "the votaries 
of intolerance" had been "nearly silenced;" for "general calumnies 
against the moral principles of the Catholics" had been "exploded." 
The Board had cheered and protected the people against local oppres- 
sions of bad magistrates and others, warned them "against the snares of 
insidious foes," frustrated "intrigues," baffled corruption. Freedom of 
discussion had "elicited the talents, upheld the virtues and advanced 
the fame of the country." They had placed "the great cause" of their 
petitions "on the firm basis of universal good — the religious freedom of 
all mankind." For these services the meeting " sincerely thanked the 



344 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. 

members of the Catholic Board and recommended them to the respect 
and gratitude of their county." In this paragraph I have condensed 
the substance of the resolutions passed by the aggregate meeting. 

But one touching incident will render this meeting for ever interest- 
ing and memorable, especially to the Irish people. At the commence- 
ment of the proceedings, as O'Connell, standing in front of the platform, 
with his arms folded across his breast, was addressing the audience, an 
interruption at one of the small doors at the side of the altar (for the 
meeting was held in a chapel) caused him to turn round. For a moment 
there was silence. Then a cheer was heard from the people outside. 
But suddenly the immortal name of Cuiirax rang through the sacred 
edifice. Many a stout arm was extended to help the dying patriot as 
he feebly advanced to the front of the stage where O'Connell and the 
^•ther Catholic leaders stood. Tremendous acclamations shook the build- 
ing as O'Connell sprang towards him, seized his hand and led him for- 
ward. The excitement was almost too much for his shattered frame; he 
sank into a chair and for a few moments covered his face with his hands. 
An eye-witness of the scene says: "I never shall forget the sharp, pen- 
etrating glance he threw over the assembly, when he seemed to rally 
from the transient debility which at first oppressed him, and the fixed 
regard he east upon O'Connell when he resumed his address." His ap- 
pearance among the Catholics at the moment when everything seemed 
to look black and menacing to their hopes, when tyrant power proscribed 
and denounced them, when false or lukewarm friends betrayed or fell 
off from them, not merely touched their hearts and gratified them, but 
rekindled in their souls fresh spirit and energy. Their memories went 
back to the dark days of '98, when, with a patriot's words of flame, the 
dauntless advocate of the United Irishmen, in his zeal for his lost clients, 
struggled against despair, never once shrinking before the face of threat - 
enings or the infinite perils that gathered around. "Those," says Thomas 
Kennedy, describing this most interesting scene, "who had heard him 
in the days of his power, regarded him with all the hallowed feelings 
which are associated with the memory of his exertions in the defence 
of martyred patriotism, while others like myself, with whom those events 
wear all the interest of times prior to our own. and whose admiration 
of his genius was excited by the delighted perusal of his fascinating 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 345 

and faultless speeches, gazed at him with mingled feelings of homage 
and devotion." 

"When the business of the meeting drew to a close, one of the speakers 
arose a second time and proposed the following resolution: "Resolved, 
that the most cordial and grateful thanks of the Catholics of Ireland 
are pre-eminently due and hereby given to that incorruptible patriot, 
the Right Hon. John Philpot Curran, who has this day honored our 
meeting with his presence, and with whose uniform exertions in the 
cause of religious freedom we have ever seen connected the fairest and 
proudest recollections of Catholics and Irishmen." This resolution w T as, 
of course, carried, by acclamation. Curran, full of emotion, pressed his 
hand on his heart and bowed his acknowledgments. 

At this meeting, too, the eloquent — indeed, altogether too eloquent 
and high-flying — Charles Phillips addressed Curran. I shall give one 
or two sentences as a specimen of his redundant hyperbolical style. 
After calling Curran "that paragon of Irishmen," he said, seeing him 
show signs of agitation, "No, Curran, do not be afraid that I shall de- 
preciate you by my admiration. I cannot rise into the region where 
you soar ; and even if I could, the fate of Icarus forewarns me not to 
approach the sun whose refulgence would consume me. Contemplating 
such a man, to be just I must be silent. Panegyric in such a case is 
poverty, and to be eloquent is to be wordless." [Loud applause.) This 
seems to me almost frigid in its effort to be fervid. Still many of his 
over-ornate passages were really alive with the spirit of true eloquence. 
In this speech he tells a humorous story of Charles James Fox. Fox 
was in debt; "the Jews called on him for repayment. 'Ah, my dear 
friends,' says Fox, 'I admit the principle — I owe you the money; but 
what time is this, when I am going upon business !' Just so, our friends 
admit the principle ; they owe you emancipation — but war is no time. 
Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They returned to the charge. 
'What!' cries Fox; 'is this a time, when I am engaged on an appoint- 
ment?' What say our friends ? ' Is this a time, when all the world are 
at peace?'" [Laughter.) "The Jews departed; but the end of it was, 
that Fox with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was as much in debt as him- 
self, shut themselves up in garrison. The Jews surrounded his habita- 
tion, and Fox put his head out of the window, with this question : ' Gen- 



346 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

tlemen, are you Fox-hunting or Hare-hunting this morning?' " (Laughter.) 
" His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews : ' Well, well, Fox, you have 
always admitted the principle, but always protested against the time ; 
we will give you your own time — only fix some final day for our repay- 
ment.' 'Ah! my clear Moses,' replied Fox, 'now this is friendly; I take 
you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as it's to be a final day, what 
would you think of the clay of judgment?' " (A laugh.) " ' That will be 
too busy a day with us.' 'Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, 
let us settle it the day after.' (Laughter.) "Thus it is; between the 
war inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst and the peace inexpediency of Mr. 
Grattan, you may expect your emancipation bill pretty much about the 
time that Fox appointed for the payment of hi* creditors." (Laughter.) 
This was, in all probability, the last political meeting at which 
Curran appeared. The traces of premature decay, and the signs of 
death not very far off. were visibly imprinted on his countenance. The 
languid expression of his features, more conspicuous when he tried to 
smile, gave melancholy warning to the hearts of his admirers. But his 
dark and eloquent eye still blazed with his old fire of genius whenever 
one of the orators would utter a generous sentiment. All eyes followed 
with last glances of grief and sympathy his retreating figure, when, 
overcome by the heat and excitement, now too much for his shattered 
constitution, he rose, during the reading of a petition, and. taking the 
arm of a friend, went forth. Kennedy says: "I never saw him again. 
Soon after he went to France, and from thence to England, where he 
closed his earthly career." 1 must now say farewell to this incorrupt- 
ible patriot. He died on the 14th of October, 1817, at nine at night 
He had eagerly desired that his ashes should rest in his native isle, but, 
strangely, his executors buried him in one of the vaults of Paddington 
Church, where his remains were left for twenty years. Then, as Davis 
says, they 'were resinned by his mother earth." His second funeral 
was public; he now sleeps in Glasnevin Cemetery, close by Dublin.* 

* Authorities of foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'C 11, M. P., edited 

by his son;" " History of Ireland," by John Mitchel; Wyse's " History of the Catholic Associa- 
tion;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Conncll, &c, Dublin, John Mullany;" "Historical Sketches 
of O'Connell and his Friends," by Thomas D. Magee ; "Ireland and her Agitators," by O'Neill 
Daunt ; " Davis's Lit'i of Curran ;" Lady Morgan's "Book of the Boudoir;" " Reminiscences of a 
Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy; etc. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Catholic cause languishes foe some years after the suppression of the Catholic 
Board — Final overthrow of Napoleon— Meanness of England in her hour op 
triumph— Peel and his Peelers — -He creates the class of stipendiary magistrates 
— Fall of the war prices, and agricultural distress in Ireland — Peel's cheap 
ejectment laws — He resists inquiry into the condition of Ireland, and renews 
Insurrection acts — Ireland scourged by famine and typhus-fever in 1817— Lord 
Sidmouth's "six acts" — Massacre of Peterloo, near Manchester — Orange mas- 
sacre of Shercock, in the county Cavan — Rapid summary of several Catholic 
meetings — The "Catholic Divan" — Lord Fingal refuses to take the chair at an 
aggregate meeting in clarendon street chapel — the catholic association of 
1815 — Dr. Murray's mission to Rome — English intrigues in Rome — O'Connell and 
Henry Grattan — Resolute opposition of the prelates, clergy and people of Ire- 
land to the veto— Poverty and weakness of the Catholic Association — Divisions 
in the National camp — Fatal duel between O'Connell and D'Esterre — Depart- 
ure of Lord Whitworth from Ireland — Strange affair between O'Connell and 
Secretary Peel — Duel between Lidwill and Sir Charles Saxton — Collision with 
the vetoists — efforts at conciliation — father hayes's letter from rome — o'con- 

NELL CO-OPERATES WITH "THE FRIENDS OF REFORM IN PARLIAMENT" — jEnEAS McDoN- 
NELL FINED AND IMPRISONED — THE RhEMISH TESTAMENT — ANSWER TO THE IRISH CATH- 
olics from the court of rome — dinner to thomas moore — dinner to o'connell 
at Tralee — Catholic meetings — General D'Evereux — Death of Grattan — O'Con- 
nell supports young Grattan at the Dublin election. 

\ OR several years after the suppression of the Board the Catholic 
cause made little progress. Indeed, the general fortunes of 
Ireland became gloomier every day. England was now in her 
highest place of pride. In 1815, the great emperor escaped 
from Elba and made a descent on the coast of France, at the head 
of a small, but trusty, band of his old guard. His triumphant march 
to Paris was one of the most electrifying achievements in all history. 
All the armies sent against him joyfully went over to him and marched 
"under the wings of his victorious eagles." Paris, the provinces, all 
France, once more confessed his imperial sway, and prepared to sustain 
their chosen chief against the banded hosts of Europe. But this suc- 
cess was only an ephemeral gleam. At Waterloo his might went down 
for ever before the combined armies of England and Prussia. England 
now touched her highest point of greatness. Mean in the midst of her 




348 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 



triumph, she not merely insisted that the twice-restored Bourbons should 
suppress the Irish legion in the service of France, engage to raise no 
more brigades of " wild geese," but she even persecuted for a time some 
of the gallant exiles of '98. It was small consolation to Ireland that 
Castlereagh claimed the credit of having procured the revival of the 
Irish ecclesiastical seminary in Paris. 

England no longer feared the triumph of French principles in Ire- 
land. The second American war had come to an end. A treaty of peace 
with the United States had been concluded on the 24th of December, 
1814. The British oligarchy, church and state, "the Orange Ascend- 
ency" were now so firmly enthroned that they could afford to be inso- 
lent and spurn the idea of anything like concession. The Catholic 
aristocracy, more and more every day, withdrew from all participation 
in Irish political affairs. O'Connell still swayed the democracy; but for 
long his efforts to achieve emancipation were productive of hardly any 
perceptible results. "The hopes of the Catholics," says Richard Lalor 
Shiel, "fell with the peace. Along interval elapsed in which nothing 
very important or deserving of record took place. A political lethargy 
spread itself over the gnat body of the people; the assemblies of the 
Catholics became more (infrequent, and their language more despondent 
and hopeless than it had ever been." Mr. Mitchel adds: "And never 
before, for half a century, had the 'Protestant interest' shown itself so 
aggressive and so spiteful towards the Catholic people." 

Mr. Secretary Peel, during the years of his administration — a period 
of such little hope for Ireland — signalized himself by many ingenious 
and malignant devices for riveting more securely upon that unhappy 
land the fetters of England's dominion. He reorganized and increased 
the constabulary, so as to render it, under the pretence of being a civil 
force, in reality a numerous and well-drilled military body, fully capable 
of playing a useful auxiliary part, in conjunction with the regular army, 
in suppressing any attempts on the part of the trampled Irish to regain 
their lost independence. At least one small party of the constabulary 
is stationed in every parish in Ireland. Thus a network of men, partly 
spies, partly soldiers, covers the island. Doubtless, if a national up- 
rising became general, these men. who, after all, are for the most part 
sons of Irish small farmers and peasants, might be absorbed in the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 349 

popular might, unless speedily concentrated by the enemy ; but, at the 
commencement of an insurrectionary movement, they are likely to prove 
of incalculable service to the British, in crushing the small bands of 
peasantry assembling from various points, and in intercepting them so 
as to prevent their junction in any great force. This unpopular corps 
has received from the country-people the nickname of Peelers, after the 
name of their founder or reorganizer. 

Mr. Peel also originated the class of stipendiary or police magis- 
trates. These self-important creatures of the Castle — generally briefless 
barristers or broken-down petty politicians — by making a pompous pre- 
tence of legal knowledge and of possessing the confidence of those high 
in authority, generally contrived to secure in their own hands the mis- 
management of the local administration of justice. They were expected 
above all things to guard against any outburst of independent feeling 
(a sort of thing not likely often to occur) on the part of those country 
gentlemen who were the ordinary justices of the peace. 

During the war comparative prosperity had reigned in Ireland. The 
demand for Irish agricultural produce, to supply the commissariat of 
armies and to provision fortresses, was very great. Large contracts for 
the provisioning of the navy were made in Cork. The consequent high 
war-prices enabled the farmers to endure the constant rise of rents ; but 
after the war ended, prices fell, and the peasantry began to be miser- 
able. The population of the island was now six millions. Land being 
the only source of a livelihood for the vast majority, the competition for 
farms became ruinous. The surplus population of Ireland began now 
to be spoken of. The extermination of wretched tenants-at-will com- 
menced. Often whole town-lands were cleared "at one fell swoop." 
Peel's cheap ejectment laws gave the landlords absolute power over the 
fate of their miserable tenants. One, passed in 1815, gave an assistant- 
barrister the power of decreeing, at the cost of a few shillings, the eject- 
ment of all tenants of holdings, the rent of which was under £20. A 
later act made the evidence of a landlord, or his agent, sufficient to 
ascertain the amount of rent due by a tenant. For a while longer the 
forty-shilling freeholders, who had leases and whose votes added elec- 
tioneering influence to their landlords, were let alone. Their time of 
doom, however, was yet to arrive. 



350 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



The crafty Peel took good care to resist Sir John Newport's motion, 
in 1816, for a Parliamentary committee to inquire into the state of Ire- 
land. His resistance was successful. He took good care, also, to procure 
the renewal of the Insurrection Act in 1814; he caused it to be main- 
tained in force in 1815 and 1816. He who could not give a good account 
of himself was rammed into prison. The peasant who was caught in 
possession of a fowling-piece was transported. Peel had even meditated 
the introduction of a bill to render illegal any aggregate meetings of Cath- 
olics, that were not convened by a high-sheriff or certain of the magis- 
tracy. This would virtually place Catholic meetings under the control of 
Protestant functionaries. However, this project was let drop. Perhaps 
Peel deemed British and "Ascendency" rule in Ireland secure enough, 
now that the imperial-democratic might of France was down in the dust. 

In truth, the condition of the peasantry was lamentable beyond de- 
scription. The immemorial tale has to be repeated : the people of Ireland 
wanted bread, even potatoes. In 1817 the potato crop failed. There 
were famine and typhus-fever in the woe-stricken land. Also, there was 
a huge exportation from Ireland of grain and cattle. Poverty and suf- 
ferings of all sorts sometimes, and not unnaturally, produced agrarian 
crime. Then the magistrates would meet and demand the proclama- 
tion of counties. While the peasantry were devouring weeds — boiled 
nettles and wild kail, called in Irish jirashagh — the reign of renewed 
coercion acts and insurrection acts terrorized the land. What wonder 
if popular political movements languished in those days of oppression ? 
Even in England, the tyranny of the ministry crushed popular demon- 
strations. In 1819, Lord Sidmouth carried his famous "six acts," chiefly 
to put down "the seditious aspirations" of the English people. Penal- 
ties were imposed by these laws for the possession of arms and for what 
the government chose to style "blasphemous and seditious libels." On 
the 16th of August, 1819, a body of troops massacred a number of per- 
sons taking part in a perfectly peaceable meeting, at Peterloo, near 
Manchester. One of the "six acts" was then passed, to prohibit, under 
severe penalties, the assemblage of more than fifty persons at a meeting, 
unless it were convoked by the magistrates. Mr. Mitchel calls this state 
of things "the British 'Reign of Terror.'" This, however, was aristo- 
cratic, not popular, tyranny. 



THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 35 ^ 

It was at this time that the famous D'Esterre incident began to 
develop. O'Connell said in a previous letter, " This letter must close 
our correspondence." However, D'Esterre wrote again the same 
day (Friday), but his letter was returned, unread, by James O'Con- 
nell, who observed, in his note, " My brother did not expect that your 
next communication would have been made in writing." 

On Sunday, James O'Connell received a letter from D'Esterre, con- 
taining disrespectful observations on himself and his brother. He sent 
Captain O'Mullane to D'Esterre to say that when the affair with Daniel 
was settled, he would call him to account for his conduct to himself spe- 
cially. The captain added that Counsellor O'Connell was surprised at 
not hearing from Mr. D'Esterre in what he conceived the •proper way. 
D'Esterre seems to have been urged to provoke O'Connell, by some 
public deed of insult, to become the challenger. 

Monday passed away. On this day Mr. Lidwill, one of the most 
redoubtable of Irish duellists, who had remained in Dublin to act as 
Dan's friend, went out of town. On Tuesday there was great excitement 
through the city, for the rumor was abroad that D'Esterre was advised 
to go to the Four Courts to inflict personal chastisement on O'Connell. 
During these days, it is said, that some of D'Esterre's friends sat in the 
upper windows of a draper's house, in Grafton street, hired for the pur- 
pose, to witness their champion flog our hero. On this Tuesday, accord- 
ing to most accounts, the belligerents failed to come into contact ; but 
Richard O'Gorman (father of Richard O'G-orman, now of New York) met 
Mr. D'Esterre, at about three o'clock p. m., on one of the quays, and re- 
monstrated with him in these terms: "You conceive that you received 
an offence from Mr. O'Connell ; if so, your course is to demand satisfac- 
tion. This, I understand, you have not as yet done, but if you are now 
resolved to do it, I undertake, on forfeiture of having a riddle made of 
my body, to have Mr. O'Connell on his ground in half an hour." Still 
no challenge was sent. At four, the general impression was that 
D'Esterre was parading the streets. O'Connell walked through the city 
with a couple of friends, but, according to the commonly received account, 
did not encounter his antagonist. At one moment the crowd around 
O'Connell was so dense that he had to take refuge from its pressure in 



352 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



Tuthill's hotel in Dawson street, and come out through the stable-yard. 
Even after this, he found himself begirt by an enthusiastic multitude, 
among whom were at least five hundred gentlemen. " The man jf the 
people," thus hemmed in on all sides by his admirers, had now to take 
refuge in a house in Exchequer street. After a time, Judge Day entered 
to place O'Connell under arrest; he said, however, that he would be 
satisfied if he had the guarantee of O'Connell's honor that he would 
proceed no farther in the business. 

" It is not my duty as a duellist," said our hero, "to be the aggres- 
sor; I therefore pledge my honor that I shall not be the aggressor — 
further, however, I must tell you, no human consideration will induce me 
to go." 

As Judge Day was retiring, Barney Coile said : " It is very extraor- 
dinary, Mr. Day, that a ruffian should be allowed to parade the streets 
of Dublin during two days, in order to assault a worthy man who is the 
father of six children, and this without any hindrance or interruption 
from the magistrates." 

" I hope, sir, you are satisfied," said Judge Day, "that the laws are 
competent to reach all such offenders." 

"By my soul," replied Barney Coile, in his broad northern accent, 
" I am very well satisfied the laws can reach us if we transgress, but 
during the two days he has been seeking to effect a breach of the peace, 
the laws have not reached that fellow." The judge retired without making 
any reply. 

In Grafton street, where D'Esterre was in a shop surrounded by his 
friends, James O'Connell is said to have resented a provoking leer on 
the face of one of the opposite party; but the affair came to nothing. 
Tuesday passed over without any arrangement for a hostile meeting 
having been come to. 

But at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning, Sir Edward Stanley 
appeared in O'Connell's study. He commenced by seeking from our 
hero an explanation of D'Esterre's affair. 

" Sir," said O'Connell, in a decisive tone, " I will hold no conversa- 
tion with you on that subject. My friend is Major MacNaniara; here is 
his address. You must apply to him for whatever information you 
desire." "Oh! but, sir," cried the city knight, eagerly, "I only wish to 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 353 

say a few words in explanation." O'Connell made an imperious gesture 
of refusal, and Sir Edward retired, evidently chagrined. 

At twelve o'clock Sir Edward called on that great Milesian magnate 
and duellist, Major MacNainara, of Doolen, in the county Clare. He 
expressed a hope that the matter might be adjusted by an amicable 
explanation. 

"If," said Major MacNamara, "you expect an apology or explana- 
tion from O'Connell, you must be disappointed ; he has given no offence 
to D'Esterre, he has done him no injury; therefore I must tell you it will 
be a waste of words and loss of time to speak further on a topic which 
has already, and for so long a time, engaged the public attention." 

" Then, sir, it is my duty to deliver you a message from Mr. D'Esterre 
to Mr. O'Connell," said Sir Edward, coming to the point at last. 

"Very well," responded the major; "it is my privilege to appoint a 
time and place; and I fix on this afternoon at three o'clock for the meet- 
ing, and Bishop's Court, in the county Kildare, as the place." 

Sir Edward did not seem to like this celerity of action. He first 
begged to have the affair postponed till two o'clock next day, then till 
the next morning, both which requests the major sternly refused to 
accede to. MacNamara was even inexorable when Stanley asked for a 
delay till half-past four that evening. Finally, however, he yielded 
just one brief half hour. So half-past three was the appointed time. 

Major MacNamara then observed, that as the antagonists had no 
personal quarrel or animosity, he presumed all "parties would be satis- 
fied when each gentleman had discharged one pistol." 

This moderation caused Sir Edward foolishly to assume something 
very like a tone of bravado: "No, sir," replied he, "that will not do; if 
they fired five-and-twenty shots each, Mr. D'Esterre will never leave the 
ground until Mr. O'Connell makes an apology." 

" Well, then, if blood be your object, blood you shall have, by G — d !" 
replied the terrible major. 

O'Connell could not have placed himself in better hands than those 
of the major, to guide him creditably through an adventure like the 
present. MacNamara was brave and cool ; moreover, well practiced in 
affairs of the kind. The many stories preserved of this distinguished 
representative of some of the highest qualities of the true Irish gentle- 



354 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL 

man of the old school, would make a most entertaining sketch. Per- 
sonally he was one of the finest-looking men in Ireland — six feet in 
height, bearing, it was said, considerable resemblance to George the 
Fourth. The story is told that George once asked him (I believe a great 
French monarch, a century before, asked some one a similar impertinent 
question), "Was your mother ever at court?" To which the major 
responded, to all appearance quite artlessly, "No, your Majesty, but my 
father was!" The major's courtly manners were in full keeping with 
his stately presence. 

There was a slight fall of snow that afternoon as O'Connell and his 
friend passed out of Dublin city on their way to Bishop's Court. The 
Dublin Evening Post of the time gives us the following particulars: 
'• This place is about twelve miles from the city, and constitutes a por- 
tion of Lord Ponsonby's demesne. The hour appointed was half-past 
three o'clock. At three precisely — we can speak confidently, for we now 
speak from personal knowledge — Mr. O'Connell, attended by his second 
and Surgeon Macklin and a number of friends, was on the ground. 
About four, Mr. D'Esterre, attended only by Surgeon Peele, Sir Edward 
Stanley (his second), Mr. Piers and a Mr. D'Esterre of Limerick, ap- 
peared. There was some conversation between the seconds as to posi- 
tion, mode of fire, etc., which, added to other sources of delay, occupied 
forty minutes." 

Gradually, a considerable crowd of silent, anxious spectators covered 
the ground. Sir Edward Stanley expressed some apprehension as to the 
safety of himself and D'Esterre, should the duel prove fatal to O'Con- 
nell. He even declared himself convinced that D'Esterre could not fight 
in that place on that day, without danger to his friends. 

Here a relation of the Liberator, named Connell O'Connell, inter- 
posed : "This affair has been long the subject of public conversation, and 
your friend has been the aggressor; if you now quit the ground without 
fighting, I must consider you as cowards and ruffians; and as to you. 
Sir Edward, I shall call on you personally to make reparation for an 
additional insult." 

This put an end to Sir Edward's hesitation. Pistols were prepared 
and preliminaries settled. The two seconds tossed up a coin for choice 
of ground, which Major MacNamara won. That gentleman ably dis- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 



charged all the offices of a skilful second. He took care to remove from 
O'Connell's neck a white cravat and to substitute a black one. He like- 
wise removed the large bunch of watch-seals which, in accordance with 
the fashion of the day, dangled from our hero's watch-fob. He was 
evidently on the alert to leave as few conspicuous objects as possible 
that might attract the eye and guide the aim of his friend's adversary. 
Sir Edward Stanley was clearly no match for Major MacNamara in cool- 
ness and forethought. This gave our hero a certain advantage over his 
antagonist. While these preliminaries were being settled, the unfortu- 
nate D'Esterre took occasion to say that his quarrel with Mr. O'Connell 
was not of a religious nature ; he had no animosity whatsoever to the Cath- 
olics or their leaders. Both duellists showed the utmost coolness and cour- 
age. The Evening Post says: "It would be injustice to Mr. D'Esterre, 
whatever opinion we may have of the part he espoused, or rather the 
party who stimulated him to this act, to deny that he seemed perfectly 
self-possessed." Of our hero the same journal observes: "As to Mr. 
O'Connell, we never saw him in better spirits or more composed ; indeed, 
his cheerfulness was the astonishment of every spectator." O'Connell, 
having recognized his tailor, Jeremiah McCarthy of Dawson street, among 
the spectators, saluted him gayly, and said, with an air of jocularity, 
"Well, Jerry, I never missed you at an aggregate meeting." 

The fatal moment was fast approaching. O'Connell's friends stood 
there in breathless anxiety. Many of them were, like himself, fine, im- 
posing-looking men. The great duellist George Lidwill seems to have 
got back to Dublin, for he is said to have been present ; he had the tall 
form of a Tipperary man. Counsellor Richard Nugent Bennett, of fair 
stature also, loaded the pistols for O'Connell. He had lent our hero 
these pistols for the occasion. They had on their stocks the notches of 
former duels; two men had been already killed with them. Subse- 
quently they became the property of William Sterne Hart of Fitzwilliam 
Square, a warm friend of O'Connell's. I may observe that Lidwell and 
Bennett, like MacNamara, were Protestants. The most conspicuous of 
O'Connell's Catholic friends present was Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, a 
man of powerful frame, and equally ready to shoot a gentleman with a 
pistol or to drive a mob before him with a shillelah. Full of jest and 
gayety, these bright and stalwart men had come to the field ; they were 



356 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

now, however, hushed in grim and painful suspense. Another anxious 
individual was waiting in a cottage nigh-hand to hear the result — a 
northern priest named O'Mullane. His devotion to O'Connell had caused 
him to follow him afar off, that, in case of the worst, he might be at 
hand to administer to our hero the rites of the Catholic Church. 

And now, at about forty minutes past four o'clock, the two antago- 
nists stand on the ground allotted to each. Though so many manly 
forms stood round, O'Connell, on that occasion, might well command the 
gazer's admiration. He was then, indeed, in his golden prime — forty 
years of age, his figure not so stout as it afterwards became. His cos- 
tume showed his person to advantage. He wore a broad-tailed body- 
coat, and his trowsers were stuffed into his hessian-boots tasselled in 
■front. In short, he looked his best, though his dress was slightly soiled 
with mire. In crossing a ditch he had slipped and fallen, an incident 
which, to one of the ancjents, might have seemed of evil omen ; but he 
had risen in an instant, and here he now stood waiting for the moment 
to fire and to be fired at. 

If D'Esterre wanted the commanding presence of O'Connell, still (lie 
daring and energy stamped on his resolute face and visible in his light, 
active, well-knit form, marked him out as a truly formidable antagonist 
to be obliged to meet in mortal encounter. 

When it had been finally agreed to by the seconds that the oppo- 
nents were to take their ground with a case of pistols each, to use as 
they might think proper, — when in short all was ready for action, Sir 
Edward Stanley addressed Major MacNamara thus: 

"Well, sir, when each lias discharged his case of pistols, 1 hojie the 
affair will be considered as terminated, and that we leave the ground." 

"Sir," replied Major MacNamara, "you may, of course, take your 
friend from the ground when you please. You, sir, an; the challenger, 
and you may retire from the ground whenever you think proper; but I 
shall not enter into any such condition as you propose. However, it is 
probable that there may be no occasion to discharge the whole of a ca>e 
of pistols'' These final words were ominous, or rather prophetic. 

I shall give the story of the exchange of shots chiefly in the words 
of the Dublin Evening Post: "The friends of both parties retired, and 
the combatants, having a pistol in each hand, with directions to (lis- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 357 

charge them at their discretion, prepared to fire. They levelled, and 
before the lapse of a second both shots were heard. Mr. D'Esterre was 
first, and missed." His bullet struck the ground. Mechanically, or 
influenced by some motive hardly to be guessed at now, the moment he 
fired he bent his right knee and wheeled away a little, apparently ex- 
posing his right side or even, in some degree, his back to his opponent. 
" Mr. O'Connell's shot followed instantaneously, and took effect in the 
groin of his antagonist, about an inch below the hip. Mr. D'Esterre, of 
course, fell, and both the surgeons hastened to him. They found that 
the ball had traversed the hip, passed through the bladder, and possibly 
touched the spine. It could not be found. There was an immense 
effusion of blood. All parties prepared to move towards home, and 
arrived in town before eight o'clock. We were extremely glad to per- 
ceive that Major MacNamara and many respectable gentlemen assisted 
in procuring the best accommodation for the wounded man. They sym- 
pathized in his sufferings, and expressed themselves to Sir Edward 
Stanley as extremely well pleased that a transaction, which they consid- 
ered most uncalled for, had not terminated in the death of D'Esterre. We 
need not describe the emotions which burst forth along the road and 
through the town when it was ascertained that Mr. O'Connell was safe." 

AW authorities seem to agree that the conduct of both gentlemen on 
the ground was perfectly brave and honorable. O'Connell, too, showed 
his kindness of heart. To his medical attendant he had said anxiously, 
before taking his ground, " Should any fatality happen to my opponent, 
I entreat you to consider him as your patient ; treat him with all the 
care you would devote to me." 

Fagan, in his Life of O'Connell, tells us : " It was reported in Dublin 
that Mr. O'Connell was shot; and a party of dragoons were despatched 
from Dublin for the protection of Mr. D'Esterre. On their way, the 
officer by whom they Avere commanded met, on its return, the carriage 
containing Mr. O'Connell and his brother. The officer called on the 
postillions to stop ; whereupon Mr. James O'Connell pulled down the 
window. The officer, addressing him, asked if they had been present at 
the duel ; to which he replied in the affirmative. The officer then said. 
' Is it true Mr. O'Connell has been shot?' Mr. James O'Connell replied, 
'No; the reverse is the fact; Mr. D'Esterre has unfortunately fallen.' 



358 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNEL^. 

The announcement had a visible effect upon the military; they were not 
prepared for the intelligence, and something like consternation was ex- 
hibited. The carriage was allowed to proceed, the military party being 
evidently not aware who were its occupants. 

"When D'Esterre fell, the spectators on the field could not refrain 
giving expression to their feelings — they actually shouted ; and a young 
collegian who was present, and who is now an excellent, exemplary Prot- 
estant clergyman, was so carried away by the general feeling as to fling up 
his hat in the air and shout, 'Huzza for O'Connell!' Very different was 
the conduct of the three occupants of O'Conncll's carriage. They displayed 
no exultation. The moment D'Esterre fell they went off; and though 
the place of meeting was near Naas, they were close to Dublin before a 
single word was exchanged between them." [In what folloivs we find a 
discrejxmcy between Fagan's statement mid that of the " Post," already given, 
to the effect that, on D' Estcrre 1 s fail, "both surgeons hastened to him" mid 
found the course of the ball.) "At last O'Connell broke the silence, sav- 
ing: 'I fear he is dead, he fell so suddenly. Where do you think lie 
was hit?' ' In the head, 1 think,' said his medical friend. 'That can- 
not be — 1 aimed low; the ball must have entered Dear the thigh.' This 
will be considered a remarkable observation, when it is recollected where, 
as was subsequently found, the wound was intlictcd. It shows the per- 
fect coolness and humanity of O'Connell. Being one of the surest shots 
that ever fired a pistol, he could have hit his antagonist where he pleased; 
but his object was merely, in self-defence, to wound him in no mortal 
part, and he aimed low with that intention." 

The oil-lamps, that dimly lit the streets of Dublin in those days, 
threw their dull gleams on the faces of an excited populace thai night 
Although a light fall of snow was on the ground, the public ways 
swarmed with crowds anxiously discussing the conflicting statements 
all through the night. The sensation that stirred the whole city was 
wonderful. Probably no event has moved Dublin so deej.lv since. All 
were interested one way or the other. At first the suspense was tortur- 
ing. When sure intelligence of O'Connelbs safety arrived, the trans- 
ports of the masses were unbounded. Still, there were vaiying accounts 
of different points connected with the tragedy, so that the general excite- 
ment showed no signs of quickly subsiding. Bonfires blazed in several 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 359 

streets. It was plain that if unhappy D'Esterre, in the earlier stages 
of the quarrel, had succeeded in inflicting any absolute personal violence 
on O'Connell, the most serious disturbances would have arisen in the 
city. But D'Esterre was now in mortal agony. It is said that, exultant as 
the people were, they tried to restrain the demonstrations of their delight 
in pity for that unfortunate victim of his own rashness and unbridled 
passions. 

He, in the mean time, was past all hope — his life rapidly ebbing 
away. As it was impossible to staunch the wound, he perished on the 
second day after the duel from loss of blood. As he lay on his death- 
bed, pale and sinking, his last feebly-uttered words confessed that 
O'Connell was free from all blame in the unhappy transaction. "While 
his widow, young and beautiful, was in her first, fresh agony of grief, 
the bailiffs entered that abode of misery. His house, his furniture, 
nay, it is said, his corpse even, were seized in execution. He was hastily 
buried that very night by the feeble light of lanterns. 

Such was the melancholy fate of D'Esterre. A deceased brother of 
John Cornelius O'Callaghan, in a short biography of O'Connell written 
some time before '48, makes the following curious reflection upon his 
character and destiny: "His contest with O'Connell has rescued 
D'Esterre's name from that miserable obscurity which is the general 
fate of most human beings. D'Esterre was a brave man gone astray. 
Were Ireland a nation, like those once despicable countries which raised 
themselves to that state, such as the United Provinces of Holland or the 
United States of America — had Ireland a navy like these, had D'Esterre 
commanded a ship with a crew of Irish lads in that navy, we would 
place him alongside a ship of any other nation, far or near, and lay two 
to one he would soon make her strike her flag. But such was not his 
fate. He served with thousands of forgotten Irishmen as an officer in 
the English navy." - 

This duelling adventure of O'Connell's added immensely to his popu- 
larity. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more popular man any- 
where than he was at this period. His success in this encounter struck 
a terror, also, into the numerous unscrupulous enemies whom his bold 
denunciations of men and abuses had raised up against him. He was 
now feared as a man of cool intrepidity, who was ready to back his 



360 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

words with the pistol, and who moreover appeared to be an unerring 
shot. 

I shall make some further quotations from Fagan's "Life of O'Con- 
nell" to complete the narrative of this singular episode in our hero's 
life: 

" In some respects the accounts we have given from the papers differ 
from the version communicated to us, as the statement of one who had 
been present during the whole transaction. For instance, the papers 
say that the parties did not meet in the streets. The circumstances 
detailed to us do not justify that statement. It appears that, after the 
correspondence between the parties, Mr. O'Connell was attending his 
professional duties at the Four Courts, and was in the act of addressing 
the judges in some case or other, when his brother came in and inti- 
mated to him that Mr. D'Esterre was on the quay opposite the Courts, 
with a whip in his hand, waiting to meet him. Mr. O'Connell requested 
Lis In-other to wait until he had concluded his observations, and he then 
asked liim where D'Esterre was, in order that he might proceed in that 
direction. Having been informed, he left the court, and meeting 
D'Esterre, the latter lifted his whip and shook it over Mr. O'Connell's 
head. A collision was about to ensue, when the bystanders interfered, 
and Mr. D'Esterre was forced into a shop, in order to avoid the indigna- 
tion of the crowd. . . . 

"The excitement in Dublin, when the result was known, cannot be 
described, and, indeed, is scarcely to be credited by those who were not 
then in the metropolis. Over seven hundred gentlemen left their cards 
at Mi'. O'Connell's the day after the occurrence. Great commiseration 
was felt for D'Esterre's family; but it was considered that he himself 
lost his life foolishly. He was not called on to be the corporate cham- 
pion. We may add, that he was an officer in the navy and an eccentric 
character. He at one time played off rather a serious joke upon his 
friends, who resided near Cork. He wrote to them from abroad that he 
was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use 
every interest to save him Lord Shannon interested himself in the 
affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it 
turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre when under the influence 
of the jolly god. Knowing his character, many even of opposite poli- 




THOMAS MOORE. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 361 

tics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the 
issue the unfortunate gentleman provoked. 

" When the carriage reached O'Connell's residence in Merrion Square, 
he requested his brother to go immediately to Dr. Murray, the Catholic 
coadjutor archbishop, to communicate to his lordship the melancholy 
result, and say how deeply he deplored the occurrence. ' Heaven be 
praised !' exclaimed his lordship, thinking for the moment only of the 
Liberator's escape ; ' Ireland is safe ;' so highly and prophetically did he 
even then regard the life and future services of 0'Connell. On his return 
from Dr. Murray's, Mr. James O'Connell was requested by his brother to 
retain Mr. Richard Pennefather, now Baron Pennefather, to defend him 
in case of need. The precaution was, however, unnecessary, as will 
appear from the subjoined letter which, the day after the death of 
D'Esterre, Mr. O'Connell received from Sir Edward Stanley, the friend 
of the deceased : 

" ' Royal Barracks, 4th February, 1815. Sir : — Lest your professional 
avocations should be interrupted by an apprehension of any proceeding 
being in contemplation in consequence of the late melancholy event, I 
have the honor to inform you that there is not the most distant intention 
of any prosecution whatever, on the part of the family or friends of the 
late Mr. D'Esterre. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, 
humble servant, Edward Stanley.' 

"To this Mr. O'Connell returned the following reply: 

'" Merrion Square, 5th February, 1815. Sir: — I have the honor to 
acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday, and I beg of you to 
accept my sincere thanks for your very polite and considerate attention. 
It is to me a mournful consolation to meet such generous sentiments 
from those who must be afflicted at the late unhappy event. But, 
believe me, my regret at that event is most sincere and unaffected ; and 
if I know my own heart, I can, with the strictest truth, assert that no 
person can feel for the loss society has sustained in the death of Mr. 
D'Esterre with more deep and lasting sorrow than I do. Allow me 
again to thank you, sir, for the courtesy of your letter — a courtesy quite 
consistent with the gentlemanly demeanor of your entire conduct in this 
melancholy transaction. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, 
humble servant, Daniel O'Connell.' 



3(52 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

" Thus terminated an affair which made afterwards so deep an im- 
pression on O'Connell's mind, and influenced in so decided a manner his 
future career. It created a lasting and universal sensation, and the 
details at this day will be read with the deepest interest. It is a fact 
known to many that O'Connell offered to secure a handsome annual 
provision for Mr. D'Esterre's widow. Indeed, his words were, 'to share 
his income with her.' But the offer was refused. He acted, however, 
subsequently, in the noblest manner to a daughter of Mr. D'Esterre's — 
a most accomplished lady, whose circumstances were not affluent. She 
was allowed by him an annuity to the day of his death ; and to her 
mother he was ever ready to afford any kindness in his power. A short 
time previous to an assizes at Cork, having been specially retained to go 
another circuit, pressing letters were written to him in order to induce 
him to come down to Cork. Some important cases were to be tried there, 
and his professional assistance was earnestly required. He declined 
attending, but, receiving a letter from the late Rev. T. England, P. P., 
Passage, stating that the plaintiff in one of those cases was the widow 
of Mr. D'Esterre, and that to her and her children a favorable result was 
of the last importance, he threw up his special briefs, his large retain- 
ing fees, and, proceeding to Cork, acted on her behalf and succeeded in 
obtaining a verdict." 

The old saying, " It is an ill wind that blows nobody good," was sin- 
gularly verified on this occasion. At the time of the duel, term was 
going on, and Michael 0*Loghlen (afterwards Sir Michael and master of 
the rolls, the first Catholic judge appointed after emancipation) was 
engaged in a most important case in the King's Bench with O'Connell. 
When it came on, the court echoed a dozen times to the cry, "Call Daniel 
O'Connell, Esq." But Daniel O'Connell made no reply — was nowhere 
to be found. O'Loghlen told the court that his senior happened to 
be engaged in a very unfortunate affair which prevented his ap- 
pearance there on that day. But the judges would not listen to his 
request for a postponement. He had to take O'Connell's place and 
proceed. Reluctantly and diffidently, he entered the lists againsl some 
of the ablest opponents the bar could produce. Gradually he gained 
courage. His modesty and youthful appearance appealed strongly to 
the court in his favor. The bench encouraged him. His talents sus- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 363 

tained him and astonished all present. The case lasted for several days. 
O'Connell was still absent. The young lawyer had the opportunity of 
making a reply, in which he surpassed his first effort. In short, he laid 
the foundation of his subsequent fortunes. 

"We may add, in dismissing this transaction," says Fagan, "that 
Mr. D'Esterre, after he left the navy, . . . lived on the Bachelors' Walk, 
Dublin, and on the way to the Four Courts it was necessary to pass his 
house. For years after the fatal encounter, it was observed that when- 
ever O'Connell passed the house he always lifted his hat, but not in a 
manner to attract public observation ; and his lips were seen to move 
as if in silent prayer. This continued for several years." 

The liberal press were furious in their attacks on Lord Whitworth, 
the viceroy, and his government, for their guilty connivance in the 
course of this tragic affair. The Evening Post taunted the authorities : 
" Major Sirr would have been better employed in putting Mr. D'Esterre 
under arrest than in singing psalms. . . . Alderman Bradley King, who 
is the father of a fine family, would employ himself more worthily in 
taking measures to prevent two fathers from meeting in mortal combat, 
than in exhorting a fiery spirit to forbear. . . . Upon the heads of the 
corporation and the magistracy the blood of Mr. D'Esterre lies, and upon 
them his young widow and his infant offspring must invoke the vindic- 
tive justice which the laws of England can so well inflict. Is this ma- 
lignant ? If it be, the magistrates of Dublin have the remedy in their 
own hands. They are forty in number. They make the juries. We 
defy them!" 

The Sentinel tries to criminate the lord-lieutenant directly in a series 
of bitter letters: "The two chief features in this transaction are its ex- 
traordinary publicity and delay. . . . Had Mr. O'Connell been assailed 
in the street, there was every appearance that confusion and violence 
would be the result. Had he been killed or wounded in the field, many 
duels would have been the consequence. . . . Were all the members of 
our system of distributive justice ignorant of that which everybody 
knew? . . . Shall I be told that measures were taken to restrain O'Con- 
nell? It is true; and that exertion still proves that our distributors of 
justice had knowledge of the transaction. But when they did proceed 
to restrain the parties, why not restrain both ? . . . My lord, the friends 



364 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 

and relatives of Mr. D'Esterre told him that he had no cause of quarrel 
with Mr. O'Connell." The writer asks, Why was Mr. D'Esterre buried 
suddenly in the dead of night, without a coroner's inquest? The con- 
duct of a good government should not be liable to suspicion. "I was, 
therefore"' says the writer, "very sorry to understand that one of your 
household, Sir Charles Vernon, your chamberlain, placed himself in a 
situation in which he might see the violence promised to be inflicted by 
the deceased on Mr. O'Connell. . . . Sir Charles should have hurried 
from the scene; he should have informed your lordship that the chief 
Agitator was threatened with violence by a member of the corporation, 
that the streets were filled with crowds in a very violent state of agita- 
tion, and that, to the observation of any man of sense, personal or cor- 
poral mischief must be the result," It was in vain that the abashed 
faction of the government would fain have let the ugly business resl in 
silence. They appealed, with piteous hypocrisy, to the Catholics to 
spare the feelings of the living by abstaining from all further allusion 
to D'Esterre. Vain, however, were their appeals, for the scandal clung 
to them. 

Lord Whitworth was recalled from his viceroyalty a tew days after 
the death of D'Esterre. He left Ireland a more discontented land even 
than he found it. He returned to England to find equal discontent and 
greater disorders prevailing there. 

This year, 1815, was peculiarly trying to the patience and tempei 
of O'Connell. Many things, indeed, combined to irritate him. Govern- 
ment, while abstaining from all prosecution of himself, prosecuted the 
printers who published his speeches. Newspaper proprietors began to 
fear to give reports of what he said. The Freeman's Journal was prose- 
cuted for a report of a speech which he delivered in Cork, and which 
brought odium on the Catholic cause and shocked many of its partisans. 
O'Connell maintained that the Freeman's report of this invective against 
the government and the Orangemen was exaggerated. For this dis- 
avowal of the report he was denounced as "a heartless, hollow, unprin- 
cipled spouter." No doubt, it also vexed him to see the usual Orange 
disturbances and acts of insults to Catholics taking place, this year, 
both in Dublin and other parts of the island. One Bennett was em- 
ployed to assail him in a pamphlet; also, the eccentric Dr. Brennan, in 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 365 

his Milesian Magazine, lampooned him in some despicable doggerel 
verses : 

" The Counsellor's tall, and he's big to be sure ; 
As in Kerry they'd say, he's the full of the door ; 
He's a Captain Rock pleader (no dodger or dadger), 
Who justice lugs out as a bulldog a badger." 

But this specimen will suffice. Brennan also compared him to Dan 
Donnelly the pugilist, and asserted that Donnelly was the better man. 
All these and other annoyances, great and small, tended to make our 
hero's temper more than ordinarily irritable. Besides, as I have already 
said, the condition of the cause was unusually depressed ; though, even 
after the suppression of the Board, the Catholics had retained spirit 
enough to show their gratitude to their Protestant supporters, by giving 
them a splendid banquet, which cost £3000, and at which there were 
seven hundred guests. At the same time the Ascendency journals were 
busy opening their throats in the foulest vituperation of the Catholics 
and their cause. 

O'Connell was engaged in another singular affair of honor in this same 
year (1815), which, however, terminated less fatally than the duel with 
unhappy D'Esterre. Indeed, in this second affair there is, perhaps, 
a considerable element of the ridiculous. It occurred in this way: 
The petition for Catholic emancipation, got ready by the energy of 
O'Connell to show that he was not vanquished by the suppression of 
the Board, signed by ten thousand Catholics, and presented by Sir John 
Parnell in the Commons, was, in spite of many votes in favor of it, 
rejected by a large majority. In the debate on the 30th of May, Secre- 
tary Peel spoke against the petition and made an attack on our hero, 
quoting several passages from his speeches and commenting on them 
severely. 

In the speech delivered by our hero on the 29th of August, to which 
I have already referred, he retaliated on Peel. After calling him the 
worthy champion of Orangeism, he said: "All I shall say of him, by 
way of parenthesis, is, that I am told he has in my absence, and in a 
place where he was privileged from any account, grossly traduced me. 
I said, at the last meeting, in the presence of the note-takers of the 
police, who are paid by him, that he was too prudent to attack me in 



366 THE LIFE "OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 



my presence. I see the same police-informers here now, and I author- 
ize them carefully to report these my words, that Mr. Peel would not 
dare, in my presence, or in any place where he was liable to persona 
account, use a single expression derogatory to my interest or my honor. 
And now I have done with the man, who is just fit to be nothing but 
the champion of Orangeism. I have done with him, perhaps for ever." 

I cannot spare space to give quite as minute an account of this 
somewhat confused and intricate affair between our hero and Peel as I 
have given of the duel between him and D'Esterre. 

Sir Charles Saxton, on the part of Peel, called on O'Connell for an 
explanation of his words. Peel apparently disavowed having said any- 
thing offensive to O'Connell in Parliament ; at the same time, anything 
he saw in the reports of his speeches he " unequivocally avowed and 
held himself responsible for." Sir Charles Saxton having stated this, 
O'Connell said : " In that case, I consider it incumbent on me to send a 
friend to Eobert Peel." And again: "Any friend who should advise me 
not to do so would disappoint my hopes and wishes." 

Lidwill, O'ConneU's friend, thought that it was Peel should send the 
message. He considered O'Connell "the aggressor," and that his send- 
ing a hostile message to Peel would be "an unjustifiable prodigality of 
his own life and a wanton aggression on that of another." He even 
"candidly acknowledged to Saxton that he had seen no report which 
could justify Mr. O'ConneU's attack on Peel." Next day Lidwill waited 
at his hotel for Saxton till one. The latter called after he had gone out, 
and left a note. On returning and reading Saxton's note, Lidwill at 
once wrote to O'Connell that he expected Sir Charles every minute, that 
he would appoint "an immediate hour" for the hostile meeting, and 
"the first field near Celbridge, in the county Kildare," as the place. To 
this O'Connell promptly replied : " Do just as you please," etc. 

What was O'ConneU's surprise to read in the next day's (Saturday's) 
Correspo?ident a letter, signed Charles Saxton, detailing the whole affair ! 
He at once writes a sharp letter to the Freeman, denouncing "the paltry 
trick" of getting "one days talking at him" by the publication on Sat- 
urday. He impeaches the accuracy of Saxton's statement. Uv ends 
his hasty letter thus: " For the rest, I leave the case to the Irish public. 
I have disavowed nothing. I have retracted nothing. I have refused 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 367 



the gentlemen nothing. I have only to regret that they have ultimately 
preferred a paper war." 

This stung to rage the ordinarily cold nature of Peel. He lost no 
time in sending a hostile message to O'Connell by Colonel Brown. And 
now the comedy commences. Mrs. O'Connell, seeing O'Connell called 
from the dinner-table to a mysterious stranger, who, she found from the 
servant, was an official from the Castle, was seized with sudden terror 
for her husband's life. She privately sent to the sheriff, who came that 
night and took our hero into custody. Here was an interruption to the 
progress of the melodrama; and, to make matters worse, Lidwill, too, 
was put under arrest through the skilful management of his daughter. 

O'Connell writes a note of explanation to Colonel Brown, expressing 
especial vexation at the circumstance of the arrest having taken place 
after he had gone to bed on the night of the 4th, at the instance of Mrs. 
O'Connell. However, he will make arrangements for the fight as soon 
as possible. 

At two o'clock that day (the 5th), as soon as our hero had got away 
from the chief-justice, Richard Newton Bennett called on Colonel Brown. 
They drew up an agreement that, as O'Connell "was prevented by his 
recognizance" from giving Peel a meeting in the United Kingdom, he 
should meet him "at the most convenient part of Europe," and would 
make the time "convenient to Mr. Peel at any reasonable distance." 
Ostend was the place of rendezvous appointed — the parties, as they 
should arrive, to leave their addresses at the post-office; the parties, 
also, on Colonel Brown's suggestion, to be bound to secresy as far as 
convenient. The agreement was signed by Brown and Bennett. 

This day was the 5th. O'Connell and Lidwill were bound in heavy 
penalties to keep the peace. O'Connell's recognizance was £10,000; 
while Peel and Saxton were lucky enough to escape any such restriction. 
The sheriff stated, indeed, that he had repaired to the secretary's lodge, 
in the Phoenix Park, with the view to arrest Peel, but that neither that 
gentleman nor Saxton could be found. The object of seeking to arrest 
Saxton was to prevent him from righting Lidwill at Calais. On this 
5th day of September, Saxton published a statement, in which he tried 
to prove the veracity of his published account of the interviews of him- 
self and his second, Mr. Dickinson, with Mr. Lidwill. That gentleman 



368 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



replied in a letter "to the people of Ireland," which concluded thus: "I 
go to the Continent in your quarrel, for I have none of my own. I go 
under the heart-rending circumstance of being obliged to put to the test 
the fortitude of a dearly-beloved and affectionate child, in a delicate 
state of health, and whose only surviving parent I am, by confiding to 
her the truth to save the torture of doubt ; but I go on behalf of a coun- 
try in which I drew my first breath ; I go for a people the more endeared 
to me by their misfortunes, and for a cause to which my last words shall 
bear evidence of my fidelity. I feel no uneasiness for my character in 
my absence. Wherever I may be, yours shall never be tarnished in my 
person." This affair between two English statesmen on the one side 
and two Irish popular champions, who were by many suspected of being 
secretly rebels, on the other, arrayed in fierce hostility the roused-up 
feelings of the Irish, who cheered on O'Connell and Lidwill, against 
those of the English people and the Ascendency faction in Ireland, who 
sympathized with Peel and Saxton. The Irish patriotic journals endeav- 
ored to give the affair the dignity of a national quarrel; those of the 
opposite party tried to lower it to the ordinary level of a mere personal 
dispute. At all events, it was the subject of universal discussion and 
wrangling for the time. Some maintained that O'Connell would equally 
forfeit his bail by lighting a duel on the Continent or in the British 
isles. 

Expresses were sent by the authorities to Calais, Dieppe and Ostein!, 
requesting the foreign magistrates to arrest and send back to England 
certain British subjects, who had, it was rumored, gone over to the Con- 
tinent to fight duels. On the 6th, Peel, brown, Diekenson and Saxton 
sailed from Dublin for England. On the 18th, Bennett writes to Brown, 
from London, to say that O'Connell and he are getting their passports and 
shall proceed without delay. 

But the English police were on the alert. One hundred are said to 
have been sent to the French ports opposite the shores of England. Spe- 
cial despatches from the Home Ol'tice ordered all the mayors to be on the 
watch to seize O'Connell and Lidwill, whose persons were fully deseribed. 
Mr. Cuddihe, a Dublin citizen, who bore a remarkable likeness to O'Con- 
nell, and who also, oddly enough, carried on the provision business on 
Bachelors' Walk, Dublin, in the very house that had been owned by the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 369 



unfortunate D'Esterre, was arrested for Dan. In Calais, the English 
police burst into the apartment of another gentleman, who had a look 
of our hero. On Tuesday morning, the 19th of September, at four o'clock, 
a swarm of policemen filled the apartments of Holyland's Hotel, in the 
Strand, where the great Agitator was stopping, and succeeded in cap- 
turing him just as he was about to step into his chaise for Dover. They 
said that old Sir Robert Peel, the secretary's father, had promised them 
fifty guineas a man, if they should succeed in capturing the formidable 
Irish chieftain. No wonder that they were in a fierce state of delight. 
Exulting over their exploit, forty picked constables at once conveyed 
our hero in a coach to Bow Street. He was subsequently bound in 
recognizances in the King's Bench — himself in £5000, and two sureties 
in £2500 each — to appear before the court when called on. 

Bennett arrived at Ostend on the 22d. He at once wrote to Brown, 
informing him of O'Connell's arrest and asking him to make an appoint- 
ment. 

A Dublin journal of the day insists that the police-magistrates could 
as easily have secured Peel and Saxton, who were well known in every 
town through which they passed, as strangers, like Lid will and O'Con- 
nell, endeavoring to conceal themselves. This paper insists that it was 
"a regularly-organized plan to tarnish the honor of one party and ex- 
hibit the others as men of the most ardent courage." It was "an effort 
to bolster up the character of a man whom it was intended to preserve." 
A Mr. Becket, too, "the friend and associate and companion in office of 
Mr. Peel," is "the informer" who causes O'Connell to be arrested, "while 
he suffers his friend and colleague, Mr. Peel, to pass to France without 
making any affidavit to justify or obtain an arrest." 

Lidwill arrived in Dublin on the 28th, and O'Connell on the 29th 
by the Holyhead packet. A short time afterwards, a gentleman on 
horseback, who refused to dismount, announced to Sir Charles Saxton, 
at the Lodge in the Park, that his kinsman, George Lidwill, awaited him 
in Calais, telling Sir Charles, at the same time, that his own name was 
Michael Lidwill. Sir Charles began to talk in a rambling style, on 
irrelevant topics. "My commission," said Michael Lidwill, interrupting 
him, "terminates with the delivery of the message I have just commu- 
nicated to you." "In that case," replied Sir Charles, "I shall wait 



370 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



immediately on Mr. Lidwill at Calais." The barojrft set out that very 
evening. George Lidwill and he met at Calais. Lidwill coolly received 
his fire, and then said : " Towards you, sir, I never felt any resentment 
— I never considered this as a quarrel of my own. Any irritation which 
my arrest excited in my mind has long since been obliterated. God 
forbid I should ever retain resentment for half the period that has 
elapsed since my arrest. I respect too sincerely those feelings I wit- 
nessed in your anxious parent — feelings which my situation enables me 
to understand — to raise my arm against the object of her solicitude. I 
think it necessary to give these reasons for my conduct, lest it might be 
imputed to a conviction in my own mind that I was in error in my 
former proceedings. Against any such conclusion I decidedly protest." 
Lidwill, having thus spoken, fired in the air; he then shook hands with 
Sir Charles, and so the affair ended. I may remark, before passing to 
other topics, that to the end of O'Connell's life feelings of enmity sub- 
sisted between him and Peel. 

During the three or four years that followed 1815, the Catholic cause 
seemed to be in a completely prostrate condition. Repression was the 
order of the day. Peel and his twenty-five thousand Peelers apparently 
had it all their own way. Still, O'Connell, from time to time, made 
efforts to keep the spirit of freedom alive in the people's hearts. The 
Association, in February, 1816, had spurned the "securities" petition 
got up by the Trimleston clique. In February, 1817, we find O'Connell 
again in collision with the vetoists. This "miserable coterie" an- 
nounced that they would hold a "hugger-mugger" meeting, on the 
4th of that month, at 50 Eccles street, and that, while they adhered to 
the principle of their petition of the previous year, they would evince, 
by their intended measure, "a desire that the general feeling of the Roman 
Catholic body mag, as far as j)ossible, be attended toy This amusing dis- 
play of impudence on the part of the Seceders provoked O'Connell and 
other leaders of the popular section to attend and upset the "hole-and- 
corner" proceedings. In vain were they stopped in the hall by a servant 
boy; in vain Lord Southwell referred to a notice in the hall, confining 
the meeting to those who, the year before, had sent the petition to Mr. 
Grattan, and "hoped gentlemen would withdraw." But, "as the public 
advertisement had announced no such reservation, they refused to l>e 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 371 

bound by this private arrangement." Nicholas Mahon opened fire on 
the astounded little clique, by telling them that he was there " in the 
assertion of his right as a Catholic, to attend to what was his individual 
concern, as well as that of the body at large, and therefore would 
remain." Neither would O'Connell withdraw. He "entirely denied 
the right of. any portion of the Catholic body to form themselves into a 
privileged class, or an Orange lodge, out of which they could exclude 
any other Catholic looking for emancipation." Besides, he said, he had 
come in a spirit of conciliation and to make propositions for union. 
After some consultation, a meeting was held ; but O'Connell's overtures 
failed to produce the desired harmony of action. His advances were 
rejected. He and his friends then withdrew; but, ere retiring, he told 
them that he had taken away "all color or shadow of excuse" from their 
opposition, "that they only sought for dissension and distraction," that 
their ultimate object was "to increase the corrupt influence of the min- 
istry, at the expense of the religion and liberty of Ireland." Finally, 
he said, "their puny efforts for a veto were poor and impotent." 

Nevertheless, a "conciliating committee" of Catholics was formed, 
which issued a circular proposing, as an arrangement that ought to sat- 
isfy all parties, a plan for the domestic nomination of bishops. This plan 
resembles the system actually prevailing in Ireland, whereby, as John 
O'Connell says, "the Catholic bishops of Ireland are selected by the pope 
out of a list or lists forwarded to him from the prelates of the province 
and the clergy of the vacant diocese." Dr. Kernan, bishop of Clogher, 
had recently been elected in this way. About this period, a letter from 
Rome, written by the Rev. Richard Hayes, stated that the hopes of the 
vetoistical party at Rome, with Cardinal Gonsalvi at their head, had 
been revived by the coming of "young Wyse, late of Waterford, and a 
Counsellor Ball;" that "these youths had repeated to the cardinal, to 
the pope, to Cardinal Litta and other officials that 'all the property, 
education and respectability of the Catholics of Ireland were favorable 
to the veto ; that the clergy were secretly inclined to it, but were over 
ruled by the mob,' etc. etc. ... It is true that Cardinal Litta now 
abhors the veto more, if possible, than any Catholics in Ireland ; and 
the pope is resolved to take no step without his advice; yet you may 
judge of the intrigue, when the miserable farce of these silly boys is 



372 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



given the importance of a regular diplomatic mission." Father Hayes 
then complains of the interruption of his correspondence with Ireland 
in its passage through different countries. ""What a combination," he 
exclaims, "of misfortunes — Italian villainy, French tyranny, British 
corruption, vetoistical calumny, and, more than all, apparent Irish 
neglect" — have thrown their affairs into the utmost danger. Father 
Hayes concludes by asking to have Dr. Dromgoole and the Rev. Richard 
McAuley sent to him as coadjutors. This letter was considered at an 
aggregate meeting, held on March the 6th ; strong resolutions against 
the veto were passed. On this occasion we find Counsellor Stephen 
Woulfe making a very honorable retractation of his own opinions in favor 
of the veto, and sharply censuring the conduct of the Seceders. O'Con- 
nell explains away a mistake of Mr. Woulfe's: "Domestic nomination was 
not a new suggestion, but a return to the ancient practice of the Catholic 
Church." Letters were addressed to Mr. Grattan, Lord Donoughmore 
and Sir Henry Parnell, explaining the spirit of the resolutions. Grattan 
simply wrote an acknowledgment of the receipt of that sent to him; but 
Lord Donoughmore expressed entire "concurrence with the sentiments of 
the majority of the Irish nation," and "abhorrence of any arrangement" 
that would increase the British ministers' power of corruption. Sir 
Henry Parnell's reply was also satisfactory. Subsequently, a motion 
was made in the House of Commons to take into consideration the Cath- 
olic claims. In the debate that followed, the views of the Catholics with 
regard to the veto and its substitute, "domestic nomination," were ex- 
plained; but, as the war was now at an end, Irish affairs were of second- 
ary interest to the British legislature; and so the motion was negatived. 
A respectful address, forwarded by the Catholics to their bishops, was 
responded to with renewed pledges against the vexatious veto. 

I may as well briefly record the fact, that in the January of this year, 
1817, O'Connell gave all the aid in his power to an abortive attempt to 
establish a society of "Friends of Reform in Parliament." This society 
was composed of Protestants and Catholics. Though its members were 
but few and its existence brief (a few meetings and dinners took place), 
John O'Connell claims for it the merit of being the first body, since the 
Union, in which Irishmen of different creeds "associated on something 
like terms of equality." 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 373 

I can only glance in the most cursory manner at several other inci- 
dents that occurred between the year 1815 and the close of 1820. In 
the year 1816, iEneas McDonnell, who had been editor of the Cork Mer- 
cantile Chronicle, was prosecuted for an article denouncing the malad- 
ministration of justice. Saurin and O'Connell were again pitted against 
each other in this case. O'Connell triumphed so far as to procure a 
postponement of the trial; but finally McDonnell was fined £100 and 
imprisoned for six months. That bloodhound pursuer of journalists, 
Saurin, denounced the liberal press, particularly the Dublin Chronicle, 
praised the Evening Post for its estrangement from the Catholic move- 
ment, called the Catholic body a "dark confederacy" and raved about 
"the last effort of expiring Jacobinism." Norbury, too, at the special 
commission held in Tipperary in January, which cost the public £10,000, 
had been furious against the Dublin Chronicle for its just attacks on the 
public prosecutions. When foolish old Judge Day, in passing sentence 
on McDonnell, assailed him for his bold questioning of the purity of the 
administration of justice and his denunciation of the special commis- 
sion, McDonnell resolutely interrupted him and said : " There is not a 
particle of evidence to support your imputations. . . . Yes, my lords, 
you have charged me with encouraging assassination ; . . . that charge 
is wholly unfounded. ... I am at least as incapable of entertaining such 
a disposition as the individual who has imputed it to me." 

On the 4th of December, 1817, O'Connell moved "for a committee to 
draw up a disavowal of the very dangerous and uncharitable doctrines 
contained in certain notes to the Ehemish Testament." They should 
record, he said, their "abhorrence of the bigoted and intolerant doctrines 
promulgated in that work. . . . The notes were of English growth." 
He reminded the meeting that the work was denounced by Dr. Troy. 
The last business of the Catholics in 1817 was to forward their remon- 
strance to the court of Rome and to receive the report of the Rev. 
Richard Hayes. "In June, 1818," says John O'Connell, "an answer 
was at last received from the court of Rome and read at a meeting of 
the Catholic Board, on Saturday, the 6th of that month." This docu- 
ment stated the reasons why an earlier answer had not been given : 1st. 
" The sentiments of the court of Rome had been made known to the 
bishops," as "the more proper channel for the communication." 2d. 



374 . THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. 

" However sincere the assurances of respect on the part of the lay Cath- 
olics, there were some phrases used by them, with regard to the extent 
of the papal authority, which did not give satisfaction." The answer 
went on to state "that the intended concession to the British govern- 
ment was proposed in what appeared the interest of the Catholic re- 
ligion in these countries, as emancipation, if thereby purchased, would 
give relief to the suffering Catholic body, remove temptations to apos- 
tacy, and also impediments to conversion from the dissenting sects." 
The arrangement, however, was meant to be "only conditional upon the 
previous passing of the Emancipation Act." In conclusion, this answer 
justified the proceedings against the Rev. Richard Hayes, who, indeed, 
even while ignorant of its contents, had, with respect to "any point in 
which it might blame him," expressed "his entire submission and con- 
trition," adding that he "would supplicate pardon from His Holiness" 
Messrs. O'Connell, Lanigan, McDonnell, Scully, Howley (afterwards Ser- 
geant Howley and assistant-barrister of Tipperary) and Woulfe were 
appointed as a committee to consider what steps should be taken in this 
matter. 

I must notice, in passing, a grand public dinner to the Irish national 
bard, Thomas Moore, die immortal author of the "Melodies" and "Lalla 
Rookh," of which O'Connell was the chief promoter, and at which the 
earl of Charlemont presided. This banquet took place on the 8th of 
June, 1818. To the toast of "The Managing Committee," there was 
a general cry for O'Connell to respond. His speech was broad and lib- 
eral. It was refreshing to see men of every party at the banquet. 
There would lie more harmony "if Irishmen would recollect that there 
were generous, kindly, brave and good men of every party." Noble 
qualities 'did in fact live and reside, as in a chosen home, in the bosoms 
of Irishmen of every taction, sect and persuasion." (Laud cheers.) Moore 
lie Btyled, amid loud applause, •the sweetest poet, the best of sons and 
the most exquisite Irishman living." In conclusion, he would like to 
exert himself for the benefit of all Irishmen. "He was a party man, 
to be sure; but it was his misfortune, not his fault, to be so. He, how- 
ever, belonged to the party of the oppressed and excluded; and if he 
had been born in Madrid or in Constantinople, he vowed to God he 
would in either place be more intemperate and violent for the protection 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 375 

of the persecuted Protestant in the one, and of the trampled-down 
Christian in the other." {Continued applause.) 

A dinner was given to O'Connell himself at Tralee, the chief town 
of his native county, Kerry, on Monday, the 24th October, 1818, at the 
Mail-Coach Hotel. Never was so great a concourse of gentry of all 
parties seen in Kerry. The whole first floor of the hotel was thrown 
into one. Still there was want of room for the company. About thirty 
had to dine in one of the parlors. When — his health having been drunk 
enthusiastically — O'Connell rose to respond, he was almost overpowered 
by strong feelings. As usual, he expressed a generous delight at seeing 
even a momentary union among Irishmen. "Where," he exclaimed, 
"are intolerance, and bigotry, and religious rancor now? . . . Would to 
God that the honest men in England . . . could see how kindly the 
Protestant cheers the Catholic advocate, and how affectionately the 
Catholic repays the kindness of his Protestant friends !" The applause 
that greeted these words was vehement and long continued. "My 
political creed," said our hero, "is short and simple. It consists in be- 
lieving that all men are entitled, as of right and justice, to religious and 
civil liberty. . . . Religion is debased and degraded by human inter- 
ference. . . . Such are my sentiments — such are yours." Some of the 
toasts drunk at this meeting are worth recording, such as, "Prosperity 
to old Ireland;" "Mr. Secretary Grant and universal toleration" 
{three times three; much cheering) ; " Civil and religious liberty to all 
mankind;" "The cause of rational liberty all over the globe." O'Con- 
nell proposed this one at the close of his response to his own health. 
He also, amid great applause, in spite of their political differences, re- 
sponded warmly when the health of his brother-Kerryman, old "Judge 
Day, as an excellent landlord, an affectionate friend and a good man," 
was drunk. The healths of " The Rev. Stephen Creagh Sandes and the 
Protestants of Kerry" and "The Right Rev. Dr. Sugrue and the Roman 
Catholic clergy of Kerry" were drunk heartily. The name of Stephen 
iieiiry Rice was coupled with "the pure and impartial administration 
of justice." {Three times three; great applause.) "Sir Samuel Romilly 
and the persecuted Protestants of France," and "The patriots of South 
America and a speedy and eternal extinction to the Inquisition." 
These two toasts were drunk with acclamations; but when "The bard 



.°>7G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 

of Erin, Thomas Moore," was proposed, the enthusiasm of the company 
was simply indescribable. I suppose, at that convivial moment, every 
man present would have shed the last drop of his blood on the spot for 
Tommy, just as Dickens tells us Mrs. Todgers's boarders, at a certain 
period of the night, on a memorable festive occasion, would have died 
to a man for that estimable lady. " The duke of Leinster and the resi- 
dent nobility of Ireland;" "The earl of Charlemont, the hereditary 
patriot of the Irish nobility;" "The glorious and immortal memory of 
John Philpot Curran;" "Charles Philips, coupled with the independ- 
ence of the Irish bar;" "The president and free people of North Amer- 
ica — may they be bound in the bonds of eternal unity with these 
countries;" "Universal benevolence;" O'Conncll's uncle, "Old Hunting- 
cap"; his more distinguished uncle, " Lieutenant-General Daniel Count 
O'Connell;" — all these and many more toasts, good, bad and indifferent, 
were drunk rapturously, in o'erflowing glasses, on that jovial and har- 
monious night. If, haply, "the mirth and fun grew fast and furious" 
after "the witching hour," good-fellowship prevailed to the last. On 
"this great night for Ireland," John Bernard of Ballynaguard, Esq., 
presided. The vice-president was John Stack of Ballyconry, Esq. No 
doubt, both fulfilled their duties worthily, not without a due share of 
Irish jollity. 

At the general elections of 1818, O'Connell exerted himself to pro- 
cure the return of the Right Hon. Maurice Fitzgerald, the knight of 
Kerry, for that county. The knight now regretted that he had voted 
for the ruinous and accursed Act of Union, seeing the hollowness of 
the promises which had been made by the ministers of the Crown to 
procure its enactment. "I voted for the union," says the knight, "to 
guard against the possible re-enactment of the penal laws, which was 
contemplated; to procure the extinction of mischievous political and 
religious distinctions among my countrymen;" also, to obtain a safer 
support to the Protestant Church "than the present tithe-system, more 
injurious to its clergy than even to the Catholic farmer." 

A meeting of the Catholics of the parishes of St. Andrew's, St. 
Anne's and St. Mark's was held, on the 27th of January, 1810, in 
Townsend Street Chapel, Dublin, to express their gratitude for a credit- 
able demonstration of the liberal Protestants of Ireland that had taken 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 377 

place at the Rotunda. O'Connell, in a temperate, sensible and eloquent 
speech, proposed the resolutions. " He hailed in glowing language the 
dawn of friendship and affection which has at length broken in upon 
Irishmen. He gave Earl Talbot's" [Earl Talbot was now the viceroy) 
"administration the praise of neutrality, at least upon the present mo 
mentous and memorable occasion." A few weeks after (Monday, March 
1, 1819), an aggregate meeting was held in the old chapel in Mary's 
lane, to express, in the most marked manner, Catholic gratitude to the 
Protestants who had come forward to petition in their behalf. The earl 
of Fingal was in the chair. The journals of the day tell us that it was 
"the largest and most respectable meeting of Catholics which ever took 
place in Ireland." O'Connell especially praised the duke of Leinster; 
"the earl of Meath, always a friend and patron of Ireland; Charlemont, 
whose name was music to Irish ears; Grattan, whose eloquence and 
virtue raised Ireland into independence and liberty — the old patriot 
Grattan, who had given Ireland all she had, and would have made her 
all she ought to be." He said that the corporation possessing " such a 
man as their friend Alderman McKenny at its head, could not be desti- 
tute of virtue." Instead of the office of lord-mayor conferring dignity 
on him, "the man has conferred dignity on the office. . . . Let Catholics 
continue to deserve, and Protestants to reward with their good wishes 
and confidence, and the motto of Ireland in future be 'God and ouk 

NATIVE LAND !' " 

In 1819, a General D'Evereux appeared in Dublin to raise a legion 
(the soldiers of this legion were called the "Patriots") to aid the re- 
volted colonists of South America against the Spaniards. It is not 
properly within the scope of my subject to do much more than slightly 
refer to this movement, in which O'Connell took so great an interest as 
to accept a commission, in a Hussar regiment of the legion, for his 
second son, Morgan, then quite a lad. Gayly-attended military levees 
were held at Morrison's Hotel, and public dinners given to celebrate this 
affair and compliment the movers. At these proceedings our hero took 
a prominent part. Nothing could exceed the popularity of this move- 
ment for a time. Visions of the golden realms of Peru, if not Eldorado 
itself, seized entire possession of the Irish imagination. Adventurous 
youths were eager to procure commissions in the legion from General 



378 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

D'Everenx or General Gregor McGregor, who accompanied him. Dublin 
was on fire with military excitement. The British government showed 
no disposition to enforce the "Foreign Enlistment Act." Young Morgan 
O'Connell sailed for South America the following year (1820), under the 
care and attached to the personal staff of General D'Evereux. But in 
America disappointment and disaster awaited the Irish adventurers, 
already half-starved on the voyage. Some, indeed, eventually won high 
renown under the banner of Bolivar, and contributed nobly to the final 
success of the revolution. The character of D'Evereux has naturally 
been the subject of much controversy. Thomas Kennedy is inclined to 
deny that he possessed genuine credentials authorizing his proceedings 
in Dublin. He says the authorities acting under the provisional govern- 
ment of Venezuela refused to recognize his commissions; he accuses 
him of "dastardly flight from those who returned to call him to account 
for his breach of all engagements." He even asserts that "a secret 
communication" existed between him and Lord Liverpool; and that he 
was merely employed "as the vile instrument to drain this country " (Ire- 
lemd) "of those military spirits whose presence was regarded with feelings 
of apprehension by the Liverpool administration." On the other hand, 
O'Connell, his son Morgan, Father O'Mullane — who followed O'Connell 
in the duel with D'Esterre and followed his son to South America — all 
insisted on D'Evereux's integrity from first to last. At a tumultuous 
meeting of the enraged friends of "the Patriots," O'Connell braved a 
tempest of hisses and hootings, while maintaining that the general was 
a man of unsullied honor. Pagan, in his Life of O'Connell, says: "The 
bond fide nature of D'Evereux's commission was subsequently established 
beyond all doubt when, in 1823, he returned to Ireland in possession of 
full power and ample means to satisfy the claims of his disappointed 
followers." As far as a very imperfect examination of the history of 
this singular transaction can justify me in expressing an opinion on the 
merits of the case, I, too, am inclined to believe that D'Evereux, how- 
ever unlucky or deceived, acted all through in good faith. Lieutenant- 
general D'Evereux spent his latter days in Paris, highly respected. He 
was a native of the United States, of Irish parentage. His character 
was energetic; his appearance martial. 

In October, 1819, O'Connell wrote a letter to the Catholics of Ire- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 379 

land, in which he complimented Alderman McKenny as the first lord- 
mayor of Dublin who had presided at a meeting " calculated to promote 
cordial conciliation." On the 24th of February, 1820, he gave it as his 
legal opinion "that a Catholic is capable of being sub-sheriff." This 
year the glorious patriot, Henry Grattan, died. O'Connell, forgetting 
the breach that had so long severed them, magnanimously burying in 
oblivion many hard things said and written by Grattan against him, 
warmly supported, at the Royal Exchange meeting held on the 13th of 
June, 1820, the claims of young Grattan to the representation of the 
city of Dublin against those of Ellis, the Orangeman. He called the 
dead patriot "the greatest man Ireland ever knew. . . . 'He watched 
by the cradle of his country's freedom ; he followed her hearse.' His 
life, to the very period of his latest breath, has been spent in her service, 
and he died, I may even say, a martyr in her cause. Who shall now 
prate to me of religious animosity? To any such I will say, 'There 
sleeps a man, a member of the Protestant community, who died in the 
cause of his Catholic fellow-countrymen!' . . . Let us unite to put down 
bigotry; ... let us rally around that cause" [our country's), "and let 
our motto be, Grattan and Ireland !" It was O'Connell, too, who origin- 
ated the idea of the statue of Grattan, by Sir Francis Chantrey, that now 
stands in the hall of the Eoyal Exchange, Dublin. On the 22d of January, 
1822, he took a prominent part at a meeting in the Exchange to promote 
its erection. He moved a resolution, which the wealthy Catholic sales- 
master, Billy Murphy, seconded. On the 22d of June, 1820, at the 
adjourned Catholic meeting held at D'Arcy's, in Essex street, O'Connell 
made 'some objections to the celebrated Plunket's being entrusted with 
their petition, on account of his extreme advocacy of the " securities." 
At this meeting O'Connell complained of the use by the liberal Edin- 
burgh Review of such expressions as the "harlot embraces" of the Cath- 
olic Church. While he was speaking, some one in the body of the meet- 
ing cried out, "Why go to them" [meaning to the English Parliament) "at 
all ?" Probably this was one of the war party, that ever lives, in greater 
or less force, in Ireland, ever hostile to Parliamentary action, ever long- 
ing for the day of total separation from England by force of arms. 

On the 14th of July, 1820, O'Connell published an address in the 
newspapers, offering himself as a candidate for the office of recorder 



380 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



However, he never obtained that office. About the same time, at a 
public dinner at "D'Arcy's Great Eoom, Corn Exchange," a room famous 
in the history of many subsequent Irish national movements, he spoke 
tuuchingly of another of our glorious dead, who, " with the bayonet to 
his breast, Avas true to humanity and to his clients, advocating the cause 
of those victims he could not save." He lamented as a disgrace to Ire- 
land (a disgrace wiped out now, however), that there was "not a stone 
to mark the spot where sleeps John Philpot Curran ; and even in the 
country that he loved, there is nothing, as yet, to record his name!" He 
then gave, "The memory of John Philpot Curran."* 

* The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : 
John Mitchel's "Continuation of McGeoghegau ;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 
M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" "Life and Times 
of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament 
itreet;" Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" Shiel's "Sketches of the Irish Bar;" etc 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Kilmainham court-house meeting; outrageous and unconstitutional proceedings 

OF THE SHERIFF — O'CoNNELL's AMUSING CONTROVERSY WITH RlCHARD LaLOR SHIEL — 

o'connell threatens to join the english radical reformers — wllliam conyng- 
ham plunket's relief bills — o'connell opposes them — rude interruption of 
o'connell at a catholic meeting — advances from the orange corporation to 
the Catholics — Orange breach of faith — The visit of King George the Fourth 
to Ireland; his enthusiastic reception by the people — The visit turns out a 
mockery and delusion; disappointment of catholic hopes — the irish avatar — 
Arrival of an Irish viceroy, the Marquis Wellesley — His conciliatory demeanor 
— A confused meeting — Famine in the south and west of Ireland — Coercive meas- 
ures — Orange display — Repeal of the union — Suicide of Lord Londonderry (Cas- 
tlereagh) — Bottle riot — Public indignation — Trial of the Handbidges and Gra- 
ham — Colonel White's election for the county Dublin ; great popular excitement 
—Law-cases — O'Connell visits France — An unpleasant night-adventure. 

N" the requisition of the government party, who were desirous 
of getting up an address in approval of George the Fourth's 
recent persecution of his wife, Queen Caroline, a meeting was 
held at the Kilmainham court-house, near Dublin, on the 30th 
of December, 1820. The sheriff, Steele, aided by a large force of 
police, tried shamefully to pack the meeting, forcibly excluding numbers 
of most respectable freeholders. The crowd, however, burst in and 
thronged the room, so that the sheriff, to the great amusement of the 
spectators, had to get able-bodied policemen to lift Lords Howth and 
Frankfort, and several others, in on chairs, through a back window. 
The conduct of the sheriff was outrageous ; he nominated a committee 
to prepare an address, and then declared the address adopted, in opposi- 
tion to the overwhelming majority of those present. He threatened to 
expel persons, as not being freeholders, who actually were so. He asked 
O'Connell, who objected to these irregular proceedings, was he a free- 
holder of Dublin ? To which O'Connell answered that he was, that his 
hereditary property was larger than the sheriff's own, and that his profes- 
sion gave him an income greater than that which any of those surround- 
ing "the chair were able to wring from the taxes." Against the wishes 
of those assembled, the sheriff arbitrarily declared the meeting dis- 




382 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CO'XELL. 

solved. He threatened to commit the patriotic Lord Cloncuny to 
prison, when that nobleman, called to the chair by the people, said he 
would "obey their commands," protested against the sheriff's illegal 
conduct, and declared, amid boundless applause, "that in support of 
the law he was ready to perish in the chair, and that nothing but force 
should tear him from it." O'Connell said, if the prison were large 
enough, they would all accompany Lord Cloncuny. The sheriff then 
said the meeting was illegal. O'Connell vehemently declared that it 
was quite legal, and called on such freeholders as valued their rights to 
remain. The furious sheriff, who had already violently declared that 
"he would call in the military," now withdrew in order to fulfil his 
threat. Though perfect order and decorum prevailed, a side-door was 
thrown open with a crash ; an officer and soldiers rushed in and com- 
manded the freeholders to disperse. Some violence was used to individ- 
uals, though, upon the whole, the military showed good temper. Mr. 
Curran (doubtless, the late John Adye Curran or some other son of the 
immortal orator's) stood by Lord Cloncuny and good-humoredly thrust 
the soldiers' bayonets aside. That nobleman had to he forced out of the 
chair. The officer drew or was drawing his sword. The freeholders 
next assembled in vast crowds on the opposite side of the road. A 
chair was placed for Lord Cloncuny in the passage of a house, to evade 
the law, which then made open-air meetings illegal. An amended 
address, proposed by Mr. Burne, K. C, and seconded by our hero, was 
carried by acclamation. This address, referring to "the late proceed- 
ings in the House of Lords" against the unfortunate Caroline, expressed 
a sincere hope "that proceedings so dangerous and unconstitutional 
would never be revived in any shape." O'Connell moved that a com- 
mittee should be appointed to lay before the viceroy, Earl Talbot, "the 
outrageous and illegal conduct of the sheriff on that day." On the 2d 
of January, 1821, a meeting, presided over by Hamilton Rowan, who 
had been pardoned so early as the year 1805, was held at the Corn 
Exchange Rooms (then D'Arcy's tavern), "to consider the best steps to 
be taken as to the outrage on Saturday at Kilmainham." O'Connell 
spoke at length, opposed a deputation to Mr. Grant, now chief secretary 
for Ireland, though he respected that gentleman. He thought the matter 
should be brought before Parliament. In this speech he glorified Por- 



THE LrFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 3S3 

tugal on account of her newly-won constitutional freedom, praised Lord 
Byron as "the poet of the age and the friend of humanity," and con- 
cluded with that one of his favorite quotations from Moore beginning, 
"The nations have fallen, but thou art still young," etc. At an ad- 
journed meeting, a few days after, he spoke again to the same effect. A 
large number of gentlemen, Protestants and others, who seldom attended 
public meetings, were present. There was a unanimous vote of thanks 
and compliment to O'Connell. But, finally, no redress was obtained by 
the people for the outrage at Kilmainham court-house. 

O'Connell now began to write his annual letters to the people of 
Ireland. For a time he recommended an alliance with the English rad- 
icals. The Catholics should try to carry reform first, emancipation after- 
wards. He seemed to think their petitions had no chance in an uni- 
formed Parliament. This proposed -change of tactics brought on an 
amusing controversy between him and Richard Lalor Shiel. The latter 
indulged in some bewildering, high-flown rhetoric, all ablaze with will- 
o'-the-wisp conceits and metaphorical fireworks. " If," said Shiel, "our 
question, simplified by plain right and obvious necessity, cannot pass 
through the needle's eye, will Mr. O'Connell, mounted upon a camel 
loaded with the union and Parliamentary reform, spur the slow and un- 
wieldy animal through the narrow orifice?" O'Connell's arguments 
were "the drowning grasp of a sophist in the agonies of conviction!" 
A phrase respecting Plunket was " a transparent one, and the rushlight, 
with its feeble and fretful fire, is seen behind. It is clear as glass ; it 
covers but it does not hide. . . . The patriotism of O'Connell may be 
as pure as amber; but even in amber we may find a straw." No doubt 
some of Shiel' s analogies are ingenious and happy. But his talk of 
"annual eruptions," "a flaming fragment of declamation accompanied 
with a considerable obscuration," a "shower of volatile opinion," "lava 
compounded out of a variety of heterogeneous materials," "casting a 
peacock's feather into the scale" — all this profusion of far-fetched 
images wearies the mind and offends a correct taste. The conclusion 
of Shiel's letter is a regular maze of fantastic imagery, beyond which 
burlesque could hardly go. "I should be loth to compare him" (O'Con- 
nell) "to a sort of political vane by which all the veerings of the breeze 
might be determined ; but it were as idle to imagine that the currents 



384 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



of air on wliich the balloon is borne are regulated by the painted ma- 
chine that floats on them, as to suppose that a person swelled out with 
the very inflammable patriotism of Mr. O'Connell, and raised by the 
very levity of his opinions, should create the vicissitudes of passion on 
which he ascends. That gentleman was certainly elevated in a very 
gaudy vehicle, embellished with every diversity of hue. He had risen 
with the shout of the multitude, and after throwing out all his ballast 
and waving his green flag, he very skilfully adapted his course, in this 
aerial voyage, to all the mutations of impulse which agitated the stormy 
medium through which he passed ; until at last, in striving to rise into 
a still more lofty region, he has allowed the thin and combustible mate- 
rials of his buoyancy to ignite, and comes tumbling down in a volume of 
fiery vapor, composed of the veto, the union and Parliamentary reform." 

To this extraordinary specimen of Shiel's artificial style of rhetoric 
our hero replied in a letter full of inimitable fun, and, though severe, 
sufficiently good-humored. I regret that I can only quote a few scattered 
sentences. " I am really," says O'Connell, "at a loss to know how I have 
provoked the tragic wrath and noble ire of this iambic rhapsodist." 
This is a humorous hit at Shiel's dramatic attempts. "I would venture 
to wager that, like the rabid animal in the fable, Mr. Shiel is not half so 
mad as he pretends to be. ... He begins by calling me 'a flaming 
fragment,' next I am 'lava,' and thirdly 'heterogeneous materials.' 

"Again he denominates me 'a straw in amber," then a 'rushlight with 
fretful fire,' then, how terrific! 'a sophist drowning in confutation,' and, 
lastly — and which is quite sublime — 'a volume of fiery vapor.' " O'Con- 
nell insists that a decision on the momentous question in dispute is not 
to be "aided either by vituperation, however rancorous, or by the tawdry 
and tinsel decorations of melodramatic oratory. Such oratory is lit for 
nothing else but to gratify that species of vanity which might in a 
schoolboy be allowed to exclaim, 'See what a very clever little gentle- 
man I am! Who wants me?'" 

Of two topics in Shiel's letter — that he had convicted O'Connell of 
inconsistency on the question of the veto, and that O'Connell was 
'actuated by motives of private hostility or personal resentment to 
Plunket" — O'Connell says: "The first of these topics is an empty 
boast; the second is an unfounded insinuation." Every fool can vary 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL,. 385 

a man's meaning by garbling what he says. "I do not accuse Mr. Shiel 
of being a fool — very far indeed from it. I only point out how admirable 
is the candor of a rhapsodist. Pray admire that candor ! With this 
single observation, I take leave of Mr. Shiel' s boast. If it be not an 
empty boast, I consent to be called a balloon, and a vane, and a fiery 
vapor for the rest of my life. ... I have neither leisure nor inclination 
to follow Mr. Shiel through any more of the affectations, the 'peacock's 
feathers' and the 'volcanoes, 1 which glitter in labored and puny conceits. 
... I may now dismiss Mr. Shiel in perfect cheerfulness. I may dis- 
miss him to the association of his fellow-laborers in the Correspondent 
and Dublin Journal." These were journals prone to calumniating our 
hero. O'Connell ends this letter, which is dated 12th January, 1821, by 
imploring Shiel not to direct his sneers against the "faithful, the long- 
suffering and very wretched people of Ireland." 

O'Connell's threat of uniting with the English reformers alarmed the 
government and legislature. Measures were adopted to divert his atten- 
tion from the reform movement, which was agitating Englishmen. 
Plunket carried a Catholic relief bill through the Commons. It was 
lost, however, in the House of Lords. The fact of a relief bill passing 
in the Commons revived the hopes of the Catholics, though the majority 
of them were glad that this particular measure failed to become law. 
O'Connell, in long and able letters to the people, pronounced Plunket's 
two bills, taken together (for there were two), to be "abominable," and 
"horribly cruel to the Catholic clergy." The first, indeed, if unaccom- 
panied by the second, would give relief; but the second was "more 
strictly, literally and emphatically a penal and persecuting bill than any 
or all the statutes passed in the darkest and most bigoted periods of the 
reign of Queen Anne, or of the first two Georges. Its title should be, 
An act to ' decatholicize' 1 Ireland; for that is certainly its object." On the 
subject of these bills there was considerable angry discussion among the 
Catholics. 

We have now arrived at the period of George the Fourth's visit to 
Ireland. O'Connell wished the Catholics to take the "occasion of their 
preparations for the king's visit" to consider the state of their affairs. 
But Lords Fingal, JSTetterville, Gormanstown and Killeen, with Sir John 
Burke, Mr. Bagot and others, published a protest against "connecting the 



386 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

general question of Catholic affairs with the object of voting a congrat- 
ulatory address" to the king. O'Connell, to promote harmony, yielded, 
and adopted their requisition for a meeting, instead of his own. 

In order to secure for the king a good reception in Ireland, vague 
and deceitful promises to the Catholics heralded his coming. Even 
the Orange corporation of Dublin made for the time a false but specious 
show of good feeling to their Catholic countrymen. The Catholics met 
their advances in a warm and generous spirit. A sort of promise was 
made by the Orange mayor of Dublin, Abraham Bradley King, that the 
annual insult to the Catholics of dressing out King William's statue 
with orange ribbons should be omitted this year, as a conciliatory offer- 
ing. This engagement, however, was disgracefully violated on the 12th 
of July, on which occasion, according to the descriptions of Mr. Costelloe 
and other eye-witnesses, the Orange mob, with respectable and sober cit- 
izens among them, dressed the statue in the morning, while in the even- 
ing a ragged, but well-armed, infuriated, half-drunken mob groaned the 
chief secretary as "Popish Grant," and were abetted in their disorderly 
conduct by several soldiers of the 12th Lancers, brandishing their sabres 
and vociferating "Down with the Papists!" "To hell with the pope!" 
" To hell with popish defenders !" " The pope in a pillory in hell, and 
the devil pelting O'Connell at him!" "To hell with O'Gorman !" etc. 
In spite of all this, the irritation of the Catholics was apparently but of 
momentary duration. At two meetings they debated concerning this 
outrage with considerable moderation, and even gave the lord-mayor 
credit for sincerity, to use Lord Fingal's expression, "in his original 
offer of conciliation." O'Connell concurred in this view; indeed, in his 
speeches, he showed the most remarkable desire to be on terms of amity 
even with the Orange faction. 

George the Fourth landed at Howth on the 12th of August, 1821, 
and drove at once to the viceregal lodge in the Phoenix Park amid the 
roar of artillery and the ringing of joy-bells. His wife bad just died ; 
this, however, was probably a source of rejoicing to his wicked heart. 
He remained in seclusion for several days. On the 17th of August he 
made his public entry into his Irish capital. The ceremony of present- 
ing the keys was gone through, according to ancient forms, at the end 
of Sackville street. A barrier of green boughs interlaced, with a gate 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 387 

in the middle, stretched across that magnificent street. After a parley, 
the mayor consented to open the gate and welcome the king, when asked 
to do so, in due form, by the Athlone pursuivant. His Majesty was 
completely astounded at the vision which now met his gaze, as he was 
borne in his chariot along Sackville street. That spacious street was 
packed from end to end with a dense mass of human beings that seemed 
innumerable. Every window was crowded; temporary balconies in front 
of the houses were crowded ; the roofs of the houses and public buildings 
were crowded. "The post-office," to quote another life of O'Connell, 
"even to the most perilous projection of the building, was black with 
human beings. The very architrave was crowded with well-dressed 
females; and on the summit of Nelson's monument men were perched 
upon the very capstan which supports the statue of the naval victor." 

The king had always professed a kindly feeling towards his Irish 
subjects. He was almost the only English sovereign who had ever come 
to Ireland in friendly guise. The people, too, were just then deluded 
into believing that they were on the point of being emancipated. Be- 
sides, they were excitable, and "the cherished lure of pomp" easily 
beguiles the imaginations of Irishmen. Is it, then, so very wonderful 
that for the moment they went mad ? that those myriads on the earth, 
on the balconies, in the windows, on the roofs, were wild with insane 
delight and what seemed genuine enthusiasm ? Nor is it even astonish- 
ing that the withered heart and worn-out feelings of the royal profligate 
seemed for an instant, as if he had drained some charmed cup, to show 
signs of reviving freshness, when he heard such glad and lusty cheering 
as had never rung through his ears before, when he saw the hats and 
handkerchiefs of innumerable devoted subjects, stalwart men and fairest 
women, waving " cead mille failthe" saw, in short, joy at his coming 
gleaming on thousands and myriads of eager faces. This was the one 
triumphant day of his worthless life. He was deeply moved — ay, almost 
to tears. That hour, in his self-delusion, he may have fancied himself 
almost a demigod. And, no doubt, in mere outward semblance, he was 
"every inch a king." Eight royally he saluted the admiring myriads, 
who felt a treble foolish joy and shouted like the very thunder, when 
they saw the huge bunch of shamrocks decorating the military hat 
which their sovereign lifted at short intervals with such princely grace. 



388 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Such a magnificent spectacle was never witnessed in Dublin before. 
Through the long narrow space kept clear in the centre of the street, 
with a dense wall of human beings on each side, the royal procession 
moved in pomp along. Behind the king followed nobles, gentry, profes- 
sions, corporations, trades with their gorgeous banners waving overhead, 
magnificent equipages, horsemen splendidly mounted. All these had 
gone from the Castle to the Park that morning, in order to swell the 
royal train, and now encircled half the city. To look back the ad- 
vancing files seemed endless. On Carlyle bridge the pressure was 
fearful. On through Westmoreland street, College Green and Dame 
street the king passed to the Castle. 

The sums lavished by the Irish during the royal visit were enormous. 
All were seized with the factitious enthusiasm, which lasted till the king 
returned to England, in September. O'Connell made as much parade 
of loyalty as the rest. To gratify the king's desire, conveyed before his 
arrival by Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, "that all differences and animosities 
should be laid aside," a dinner took place at Morison's, where the leaders 
of the Catholics and the Orange faction dined together and toasted each 
other with too exuberant protestations of eternal friendship. O'Connell 
and Orange Grand-master Ellis were quite affectionate each to the 
other. O'Connell gives himself immense credit for his policy in con- 
nection with the royal visit. He seems to think it was "most success- 
ful." Many will take a different view of the matter. He seems to think 
it was necessary to make great display of loyalty to the corrupt-hearted 
king. "For the first time," he says, tor two centuries were the Cath- 
olics received by the executive on terms of perfect equality with the 
Protestants. The Catholic prelates were received by the king in their 
ecclesiastical costume, with their golden crosses and chains. It was the 
first official recognition of their dignity as prelates. To the earl of 
Fingal, as head of the Catholic laity, the ribbon of the Order of St. 
Patrick was given at an installation at which the king himself presided. 
The rest of the Catholic laity were received and cherished precisely as 
the Protestants were; and, to crown all. the celebrated Sidmouth letter 
was issued, full of present kindness and gratitude to the Catholics and 
of future hope and expectation of conciliation — a conciliation which 
everybody knew could never be effected without legal and perfect equal- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 389 

ization of political rights." This letter was a mere " palavering" letter, 
written by Lord Sidmouth to the viceroy, in accordance with the king's 
directions, expressing his affection "to his faithful people of Ireland," 
recommending them to be united, and tickling them a little with "hum- 
bugging" praises of their "generosity and warmth of heart." O'Connell, 
meanwhile, remained perfectly satisfied with his own management on 
this occasion. He considered himself entitled to "the gratitude and 
confidence" of his countrymen for his triumph over "the difficulties he 
had to encounter," and for "the mode in which he was enabled to con- 
vert the king's visit to Ireland from being a source of weakness and dis- 
comfiture to the Catholics into a future claim for practical relief and 
political equalization." He also says, "His Majesty was the first 
monarch that ever showed a friendly feeling towards poor Ireland, and 
when he came among us his regal court presented Catholics and Prot- 
estants as they should ever be, united." Speaking of the friendly over- 
tures from the Ascendency corporation, he says: "Two days after the 
statue was dressed ! We remonstrated, and there was something about 
promises for the future. There were many amongst us who did not 
believe those promises ; I must own that I was one who put no faith in 
them, though I 'pretended I did. Well, I got into the den — Daniel in the 
lion's den ; ay, into the midst of the corporation. Some, who had more 
candor than I possessed at that period, did not attend the dinner." He 
then speaks of the baronetcy which, at the close of the royal visit, was 
conferred on the mayor, Abraham Bradley King, as due to the concilia- 
tory resolution of the corporation. Many will regard much of O'Connell's 
clever policy during the progress of these events, as little deserving of 
admiration. It was all the better for His Majesty, however. The Cath- 
olics, like their leader, overflowed with demonstrative loyalt}^ and were ton 
considerate of their sovereign's comfort to "bother" him, at such a time, 
with their wearisome complaints and grievances ; so that the old rake 
of royalty spent his unruffled time in Dublin right gayly and pleasantly. 
Thirty lords and Protestant bishops signed a requisition and held a 
meeting at the Exchange, at which it was moved by Lord Carbery and 
seconded by Colonel Cuffe, that a palace should be built for George in 
Ireland. It was modestly proposed to squeeze a million of money from 
the impoverished Irish for this purpose. O'Connell (it is hard to tell it 



390 • THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

without ridicule) promised to contribute twenty guineas a year towards 
the erection of the regal pile. O'Connell, too, was one of the very few 
who attended the committee after the king's departure. Of course, the 
design was never realized. It was time to have done with the project 
when the committee found it impossible to make one of the judges pay 
the subscription of thirty guineas, which he had promised while the 
king was in Ireland. Human geese have since, from time to time, sug- 
gested the election of a royal palace in Ireland as a sure means of regen- 
erating the nation. Such proposals, however, invariably lead to nothing. 
In Dublin, however, the King's Bridge, over the Liffey, was erected to 
commemorate the royal visit. O'Connell took an active part in urging 
on this so-called national testimonial. He recommended a bridge in 
preference to an arch, a statue a pyramid, or a column. 

Bnt it was on the day of the king's departure, at half-past seven on 
a bright morning in September, thai O'Connell signalized himself by bis 
most exaggerated demonstrations of loyalty to the unclean being who 
then swayed the British sceptre. He presented, on bended knee, a 
Laurel crown to His Majesty in a tent. The king received it graciously 
enough, and offered the great Agitator liis hand to kiss. The anti-Irish 
papers <>( London ridiculed O'Connell for his servility. They described 
him as literally following the king into the sea, and kneeling in the water 
to present the wreath. O'Connell had adopted the fashion of wearing a 
sealskin cap with a gold hand like the king's. "Counsellor O'Connell," 
said a London paper, shortly after the king's departure, "is now trav- 
elling on circuit with a fur cap and a gold band, which, he says, is a 
present from the king, who certainly wore such a cap and band on his 
landing in Ireland.'' Our hero thought it necessary to deny the veracity 
of these ugly impeachments. So far was he, he maintained, from Inning 
been "unbecomingly servile" on the occasion of presenting the wreath, 
"that he did not even kiss the hand which the king held out to him for 
that purpose." Of course, he unequivocally denied his having ever 
asserted that he had got the cap from the king. 

His Majesty had been looking ;it some of the beautiful scenery of 
Wicklow on the morning of his departure from old Dunleary. Crowds, 
as great as those that had welcomed him to Ireland, assembled in Dun- 
leary to see him oil', with far more good wishes and blessings than the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 391 

old sinner merited. He seemed profoundly affected. He even sliel 
tears. As the royal yacht conveyed him away, the old dandy, in his 
blue frock-coat and white vest and sealskin cap with the gold band, was 
seen gazing through his telescope at the shores of Ireland. He saw 
thousands upon thousands of the Irish blackening the hills, while they 
wafted good wishes after him on the winds. The royal squadron sailed 
past Brayhead and the bold coast of romantic Wicklow. The king to 
the last kept his gaze fixed on the shores he was never to see again. 
The name of Dunleary was changed or degraded into Kingstown. An 
obelisk marks the spot where the king stood previous to his going on 
board. And so ended the visit of the " first gentleman" [or first scamp f) 
"of Europe" to his loving subjects, the Irish. That very soft-hearted 
people found out almost immediately after that they had been deluded 
by a glamourous fairy-show — a mere splendid pageant, an extravaganza 
with magnificent transformation scenes. The king showed no real dis- 
position whatever to redress the grievances of the Catholics ; though we 
learn from Horace Twiss's "Memoirs of Lord Eldon" that, at one 
moment, n he half believed himself that he was sincere, to the great con- 
sternation of Lord Eldon and his associates, who at once hastened the 
measures for his departure." 

"The Orange party," says John O'Connell, "who had signalized 
themselves by not refraining from their shibboleth of the 'glorious, 
pious and immortal memory,' even at the corporation dinner to the 
king (though, of course, not proposed till after he had left the room), 
laughed in their sleeves at this letter" (Sidmouth's). "The Catholics took 
it in earnest, and set about preparing to meet it in what they deemed a 
corresponding spirit, having summoned meetings and prepared the out- 
lines of an organization for the purpose, which was intended to include 
men of every class and shade of opinion. But the illusion about con- 
ciliation was soon over, the corporation having lost no time in dispelling 
it, by renewing their old Orange orgies within one month after the king's 
departure." The year following this unsubstantial pageant all the grim 
realities of famine were spreading ghastly horror over the unfortunate 
island. 

On this visit of King George the Fourth to Ireland, Lord Byron wrote 
3ome verses, entitled "The Irish Avatar," characterized by a terrible 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 



intensity of bitterness. Of course, he lashes the king unsparingly; but 
he lashes the Irish people and their great leader, O'Connell, too. I shall 
give a few stanzas of this poem, written as a retaliation on Moore for 
his attacks on the Carbonari : 

" But ne comes i the Messiah of royalty comes 1 
Like a goodly leviathan rolled from the waves; 
Then receive him as best such an advent becomes — 
With a legion of cooks and an army of slaves. 

" He comes in the promise and bloom of three-score, 
To perform in the pageant the sovereign's part — 
But long live the shamrock which shadows him o'er, 
Could the green in his hat be transferred to his heart/ 

" Could that long-withered spot but be verdant again, 
And a new spring of noble affections arise, 
Then might Freedom forgive thee this dance in thy chain, 
And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the skies. 

"Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now? 
Were he god, as he is but the commonest clay, 
With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow, 
Such servile devotion might shame him away. 
****** 
" Let the poor, squalid splendor thy wreck can afford 
(As the bankrupt's profusion his ruin would hide) 
Gild over the palace. Lo ! Erin, thy lord ! 

Kiss his foot, with thy blessing for blessings denied! 
****** 
" Wear, Fingal, thy trapping I O'Connell, proclaim 

His accomplishments! — hull! and thy country convince 
Half an age's contempt was an error of fame. 

And that ' Hal is the rascalliest, sweetest young prince !' 

" Will thy yard of blue ribbon, poor Fingal, recall 
The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? 
Or has it not bound thee the fastest of all 

The slaves who now hail their betrayer with hymns? 

"Ay, 'build him a dwelling;' let each give his mite, 
Till, like Babel, the new royal dome hath arisen; 
Let thy beggars and helots their pittance unite, 
And a palace bestow for a poor-house and prison! 

"Spread, spread for Vitellius the royal repast, 

Till the gluttonous despot be stuffed to the gorge, 
And the roar of his drunkards proclaim him at last. 

The fourth of the fools and oppressors called ' George I' " 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 393 

The noble poet then goes on to say : 

"Let the wine flow around the old bacchanal's throne, 

Like their blood which has flowed and which yet has to flow." 

After this he calls Castlereagh his Sejanus. He wonders that Ireland, 
instead of blushing for Castlereagh' s birth, seems proud now of that 
reptile, without one ray of her genius, without "the fancy, the manhood, 
the fire of her race." She might well doubt she ever produced such "a 
reptile." " If she did," it appears that, contrary to her proverbial boast, 
she can produce a "cold-blooded serpent." The welcome of tyrants has. 
plunged Ireland lower than even misfortune and tyranny could. This 
bitter poem concludes thus : 

"Till now I had envied thy sons and their shore: 

Though their virtues were hunted, their liberties fled, 
There was something so warm and sublime in the core 
Of an Irishman's heart, that I envy — thy dead. 

" Or, if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour 
My contempt for a nation so servile, though sore, 
Which, though trod like the worm, will not turn upon power, 
'Tis the glory of Grattan and genius of Moore." 

On the 7th of January, 1822, at D'Arcy's, a Catholic meeting was 
held, for the purpose of presenting an address to the new viceroy, the 
marquis of Wellesley. Lord Fingal was in the chair. O'Connell pro- 
posed and Shiel seconded an address submitted by the latter gentleman. 
The arrival of the marquis had given unbounded satisfaction to the vast 
majority of the Irish people, both on account of his being the first Irish- 
man appointed for centuries to the viceregal office, and because of his 
shining personal qualities. The Orangemen, indeed, were furious at his 
appointment. O'Connell dwelt on the "classical eloquence" and "splen- 
did talents" of the marquis, also on the fact that "at the interesting 
and eventful period of 1782" the marquis "was the first person to raise 
a volunteer corps, in which a principle of exclusion to persons professing 
their creed was not acted upon, countenanced and cherished." (Much 
apjjlausc.) Such a man would not by his presence encourage offensive 
toasts. " Since the arrival," continued O'Connell, "of the noble marquis 
in this country, important events had taken place, which presented re- 



394: THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



newed and augmented claims to their gratitude. Mr. Plunket, the 
eloquent and powerful advocate of their civil rights at least, was at that 
moment, if not actually, certainly potentially, the first officer of the law 
in Ireland. This was an appointment at which they had much reason 
to rejoice, not only because their friend had been advanced, but also 
because, by that appointment, Mr. Saurin ceased to be chief governor of 
Ireland.' 1 ' 1 Loud acclamations greeted this announcement of the rise of 
Plunket and fall of Saurin. O'Connell also alluded to the elevation 
of Solicitor- General Bushe to the dignity of chief-justice of the King's 
Bench. He praised his talents. He had never leagued with any party 
"in a system and determination to oppress his Roman Catholic country- 
men." If he sometimes helped to prosecute individuals, on such occa- 
sions in him were "always found united the talents of the orator and 
the feelings of the gentleman. He never left a sting of angry sentiment 
behind. ... It had been even said in the House of Commons by the 
official organ of government that, ' if the Catholics were to be persecuted, 
he was not the man to do it.' " The Catholic address was graciously 
received by the marquis of Wellesley. 

Perhaps it was a special object of Wellesley's policy to prevent 
O'Connell from forming an alliance with the English Reformers. At all 
events, the reception of O'Connell by the marquis, when " the Man of 
the People" made his first attempt to play the part of courtier at the 
viceregal levee, was in the highest degree flattering. It was said that 
he even asked "the Agitator," in a style of courtly compliment, to co- 
operate with him in his endeavors to tranquillize Ireland, at that time 
sorely tormented with distress and agitated by "Captain Hock'' and his 
merry men. O'Connell may have beeD lulled for the moment, as it were. 
by the honeyed words, but he was far too shrewd to succumb to the influ- 
ence of the viceregal "blarney" for any length of time. Besides, (lie 
Catholics were soon offended by the circumstance that John Kingston 
James, the "noted," or "notorious," lord-mayor of Dublin, as the Tiims 
called him, "who had the courage to set the king's letter at defiance" 
by proposing a toast insulting to the Catholics, was created a baronet 
of Great Britain. A clever Catholic member of the English bar, a Con- 
naught man named Blake, who was supposed to have great influence 
with Lord Wellesley, and had followed in his train from England, sue- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 395 

ceeded, indeed, in mitigating to a certain degree the displeasure of the 
Catholics, by taking on himself the blame of having induced his friend, 
the marquis, to confer a title of honor on James. 

O'Connell about this time published an address to the Catholics of 
Treland. It begins with his favorite quotation from Byron— 

" Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not, 
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?" 

He admits that, the year before, he and others had come to the conclu- 
sion that it was useless to petition the British Parliament again, while 
; t was so unpopularly constituted. However, subsequent events, such 
as the king's visit and letter, which showed "both the monarch and 
people in new and favorable lights,' 7 should, he says, cause them to alter 
their resolution. He accuses the Catholics of Dublin of "apathy or 
inconsistency" on the subject of the veto, "while the last bill was in 
discussion." He even insists — referring to a hastily got up meeting, 
where silence on the subject of the veto had been preserved — that " by 
dexterity, and a species of side-wind, the Catholics of Dublin are at this 
moment committed to an approval of that measure, which they often so 
unanimously and so loudly condemned." He then speaks of a plan de- 
vised by himself in order "to obviate the mischief of a vetoistical bill," 
which he had submitted to Mr. Plunket. This is, in point of fact, a 
modified plan for the concession of "securities" to the government. 
The recent delusive appearances of increased liberality on the part of 
"the powers that be," followed up by the arrival of the enlightened 
Wellesley and Plunket' s appointment as attorney-general, for the time 
being softened the sternness of O'Connell's resistance to the desire on the 
part of government to have some check on the appointment of the Cath- 
olic bishops. According to O'Connell's plan for "domestic nomination" 
of prelates, the candidates for vacant Irish sees should be natural-born 
subjects of the Crown, who had taken the oath of allegiance in one of 
the superior courts of Dublin, and had discharged clerical duties " for 
at least five years;" the electors should take "a solemn oath" not to 
vote for any person who had not been known to them "by the most sat- 
isfactory proofs to be strictly loyal and peaceable in his principles and 
conduct." This plan proposed, also, that, ere the successful candidate 



396 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

should be consecrated, the government should have two months "foi 
investigating his character;" that if "a charge of disloyalty or disaffec- 
tion against him should be proved before the Roman Catholic arch- 
bishops of Ireland, the electors should proceed to a new nomination;" 
that all Irish Catholic bishops should take an oath not to "correspond 
with any pope, prince, prelate, potentate ot any other person" abroad, 
"upon any political subject whatever," and that, if any foreign poten- 
tate or other person should write to him, he should transmit to govern- 
ment a true copy of so much of the communication as might be "inju- 
rious to the rights of the Crown or government," etc. O'Connell's 
address and this plan are given in full in the second volume of his son's 
selection of his speeches, etc. Plunket in reply made some objections 
and suggested certain modifications, especially, that "instead of a spe- 
cific charge" of disaffection to the state, "to be established by specific 
proof," a general objection to the loyalty of a candidate should justify 
his being set aside. However, this plan of "domestic nomination" 
never produced any practical result. 

On Wednesday, February the 13th, an aggregate meeting of Cath- 
olics, the proceedings at which were confused and somewhat unintelli- 
gible, was held at Denmark Street Chapel. Counsellor O'Gorman read 
the following resolution: "Resolved, that we deem it essential to our 
honor and interests that as speedy a discussion as possible, in the present 
session, maybe obtained on the merits of our petition." When this had 
been moved and seconded, Mr. Hugh O'Connor, a wealthy Catholic mer- 
chant, engaged in the West-Indian trade, moved an amendment to the 
effect that their petition should be committed to Plunket and Lord 
Donoughmore, to be presented for discussion in Parliament, "at such 
period in the present session as tiny may conceive most beneficial for 
Catholic interests." In urging the adoption of this amendment, he talked 
of the necessity of prudence and moderation and patience. The word 
"speedy," in the original resolution, seemed to him "not decorous or well 
advised." He also spoke of the infamous Castlereagh as "our distin- 
guished friend." When O'Connell, in his turn, rose and said that the 
petition "called for a speedy discussion on the merits of our claims." 
he was. as it appears to me, most unreasonably and discourteously 
interrupted by Mr. Nicholas Malion, who called him to order. "The 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 397 



petition had been passed and should not now be made the subject of 
discussion." 

Mr. O'Connell. "I am not out of order. I assert that that petition 
requires the meeting to pass my resolution." 

Mr. James 0' Gorman. "I call Mr. O'Connell to order; we are not 
now discussing the merits of the petition." 

Mr. O'Connell. "I call on the meeting' to call for a speedy discussion 
on our petition." 

Confusion now arose ; but the chairman, S ,- r Thomas Esmonde, con- 
ceived O'Connell had a right to be heard. O'Connell went on to say, he 
couldn't see why they "should put their reason and judgment into the 
pockets of two individuals." He ridiculed Mr. O'Connor's calling Lord 
Londonderry, or Castlereagh, "our distinguished friend;" upon which 
some one in the crowd cried out, " Do you come here to abuse members 
of Parliament?" "The marquis of Londonderry is not my friend," 
replied O'Connell. He added that Jack Lawless had asserted that he 
(O'Connell) was about to accept a silk gown as a bribe from government. 
" The created universe," exclaimed he, " would not induce me to accept 
a favor under the administration of Lord Londonderry." Here there 
arose boisterous interruption and disapproving murmurs, and cries of 
"Question, question!" and Mr. Hugh O'Connor conceived "that Mr. 
O'Connell was taking up the time of the meeting very unnecessarily." 
Upon this several groans were heard. Presently O'Connell talked of 
Russia "breaking up the Holy Alliance," and referred to "Greece strug- 
gling for freedom. Look to Spain ! look to Portugal ! In those countries 
we see the Inquisition and the tithe system abolished. Look to France !" 
Here Mr. Hugh O'Connor asked, " Does Mr. O'Connell mean to occupy 
the time of this meeting with such ridiculous nonsense?" (Applause.) 
" Whether it be ridiculous or sensible," quoth our hero, with good- 
humored sturdiness, " I am determined I will not be prevented from 
going on." This set them all a-laughing for several minutes. O'Con- 
nell now went on: "Can they look for foreign support against our 
claims ? What might have ensued in Ireland if the Catholic clergy had 
remained neuter?" Mr. D'Evereux here hastened to call Mr. O'Connell 
to order. Towards the end, after a good deal more confusion, Messrs. 
Hugh O'Connor, Howley and others declared they would withdraw the 



398 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

amendment and let O'Connell's resolution pass, on the understanding 
that he would not oppose their amendment as a separate resolution. To 
this O'Connell assented. The original resolution was then carried amid 
cries of " No, no ;" after which Hugh O'Connor's amendment was also 
carried as a resolution. A committee was finally appointed to prepare 
an address from the Catholics to the king, begging him to recommend 
a repeal of the penal laws that still affected them. Jack Lawless, a 
few days after, wrote a letter disclaiming all intention of charging 
O'Connell with any thought of taking a bribe from government. Some 
writers assert that this strange attempt to worry O'Connell by unusual 
and unseemly interruptions resulted from the intrigues of the viceregal 
favorite, Mr. Blake. Whether this were the fact or not, I shall not take 
on me to pronounce. 

On the 7th of May, in the same year, we find O'Connell, at a meet- 
ing held in the Rotunda buildings, co-operating with a society called 
"The National Society" in getting up a petition to the House of Com- 
mons, praying for legislative aid to establish a system of "national 
education." His son says that, on this occasion, "the first idea of the 
present National Board of Education seems to have been shadowed out." 
O'Connell's speech is not well preserved. Among other things, he said, 
" They would teach children of all persuasions, but would not interfere 
with the religious tenets of any." 

There were terrible scenes of famine and distress in Ireland, chiefly 
in the south and west, in this year, 1822. Sir John Newport of Water- 
ford, in the House of Commons, described one parish in his neighbor- 
hood where fifteen persons had already died of hunger, twenty-eight 
more were past hope of recovery, one hundred and twenty prostrated by 
famine-fever. In another parish, upon the inhabitants of which fell 
famine had "scowled a baleful smile," the priest had gone round and 
administered extreme unction to every man, woman and child. Colonel 
Patricson, quartered in Galway, reports to his superior officer that 
"hundreds of half-famished wretches arrive almost daily from a dis- 
tance of fifty miles, many of them so exhausted by want of food that 
the means taken to restore them fail of effect, from the weakness of the 
digestive organs occasioned by long fasting." In the county Clare 
99.639 persons subsisted on daily charity ; in Cork, 122,000. The sta- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 399 

tistics of the time are very defective. Alison, the Scotch historian, 
attributes this famine-havoc to "the contraction of the currency, and 
consequent fall of the prices of agricultural produce fifty per cent." 
All through the war, from the closing years of the last century, there 
had been a suspension of cash payments. Paper money had been a 
legal tender. In 1*819, Peel's measure for the resumption of cash pay- 
ments had passed. Alison, however, does not trouble himself to men- 
tion that the Irish grain crop of 1821, to the amount of nearly two 
millions of quarters, and that of 1822, to the amount of more than a 
million quarters, with numberless herds of cattle, sheep and pigs, had 
been carried over to England. The English Parliament voted out of the 
consolidated exchequer of the two islands £500,000 to relieve Irish dis- 
tress by giving the destitute employment on public works. This appro- 
priation, like similar grants during later Irish famines, was grossly 
mismanaged by English officials and w T asted on senseless and unpro- 
ductive works. The English press of the time talked of it as if it were 
mere British alms to the pauper Irish. Alison gives England any 
amount of glory for her generosity : " England no longer remembered 
the crimes of Ireland — thought only of her sorrows." More of this sort 
of sickly and sickening cant he drivels forth. But the Tory Scotchman 
takes good care not to remind us of the fact that John Mitchel takes 
good care to mention — viz., that this appropriation "by no means 
amounted to one-tenth part of the Irish money annually drained from 
Ireland into England, and applied to English purposes." 

To add to the horror of this terrible time, numbers of hapless tenants 
were "exterminated" by rapacious landlords and their still more unscru- 
pulous agents. Tenants retaliated, and now and then shot a landlord 
or an agent. "Nocturnal outrages" took place. Men with blackened 
faces, wearing white shirts, in the hours of darkness searched houses 
for arms, which could be used for defence or vengeance. These disturb- 
ances were purely agrarian, not in the least revolutionary; yet the gov- 
ernment considered a new "Insurrection Act" the proper remedy for 
such disorders. "An act for the suspension of the habeas corpus" was 
also passed. To carry this measure w r as almost the last public act of 
the infamous Castlereagh, or Londonderry. It must be admitted that 
the marquis of Wellesley, in using the terrible extraordinary powers for 



400 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

the suppression of Irish outrage with which he was armed, showed a 
certain humanity towards his unfortunate countrymen, and this mod- 
eration was probably one of the main causes ol his daily increasing 
unpopularity with the Orange and Ascendency factio 

However, even the Ascendency corporation were not quite insensible 
to the distress in the south and west. A meeting on behalf of the 
famine-stricken sufferers was held at the Mansion House, Dawson street, 
on Thursday, the 16th of May. O'Connell, strange to say, received an 
invitation to be present at this meeting. He attended, and made them 
all laugh when he said, "I received an invitation to come here — an invi- 
tation which it is not usual for me to receive." Indeed, O'Connell, it 
appears to me, was always desirous to conciliate even the Orange faction, 
if it were at all possible ; and when, on rare occasions, brought into im- 
mediate contact with them, he would for the moment succeed in inspiring 
them with more kindly feelings towards him. Thus, at an earlier date 
(1814), when he had an opportunity of speaking before the corporation, 
they were quite taken with him. Even the inveterate Giffard remarked, 
after Dan had retired. "The mildness of that man's manner surprised 
me ; I expected something very different. His demeanor is extremely 
conciliating. He is eloquent; and, d — n — n to him! the fellow is so 
handsome!" Returning, however, to the Mansion House meeting of 
1822, O'Connell also said: "There should be no rivalry in the present 
case, except a generous rivalry and emulation to excel each other in 
cheerfully contributing to the relief of their suffering fellow-country- 
men. '• (Cheers.) ' Neither did he on this occasion forget his favorite 
topic of a repeal of the union. Speaking of the causes of the existing 
distress, he said: "His friend, Mr. Leader, had eloquently enumerated 
many of the causes. It was now vain, he feared, to speak of absentee- 
ism. The period for that was now gone by. When the government of 
this country, with its peers and commoners, was transported to another 
country, it was idle to speak of absentees, for the great proprietors were 
obliged by law to be absent from their native land." (Hear, hear!) 

On the 13th of November, in the same year, at a Catholic charity din- 
ner lor the orphan school of Clondalkin, presided over by Lord Cloncuny, 
after thanking his noble friend, who had proposed his health, for saying 
"that he was honestly disposed to serve Ireland," O'Connell declared that 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 40 1 



" to Alderman Nugent, as an Irishman, he felt unaffectedly grateful for 
his meritorious exertions in endeavoring to effect a repeal of the union. 
'Twas true he differed, most widely differed, from that gentleman in pol- 
itics, but he would forgive any man his injuries towards himself, or his 
general political line of conduct, provided he redeemed them by a sin- 
cere and substantial service towards his country." He also spoke against 
"secret confederacies and private associations," and ended by proposing 
the health of the duke of Leinster. What he said of Alderman Nugent 
referred to a meeting of the Protestant guild of merchants, or " The 
Masters, Warden and Brethren of the Corporation of Merchants, or 
Guild of the Holy Trinity, Dublin," at which a committee of their body, 
with Henry and James Grattan, sons of the illustrious Grattan, at their 
head, were appointed to prepare a petition for repeal of the union. This 
petition dwelt on the miseries and grievances of Ireland since the union, 
consequent on or aggravated by that measure — fever, famine, inordinate 
taxation, suspended habeas corpus, insurrection acts, government by sti- 
pendiary magistrates and armed police, constant coercive measures, 
rejection of all motions for inquiry, stoppage of Ireland's progress. 
The petitioners said that a measure carried "by such unconstitutional 
means . . . must end in calamity and recoil upon the authors of so 
much evil." They also reminded the House that "the pressure of busi- 
ness upon you is too great, the inconvenience to Irish members to 
attend is too great, the wants of seven millions of people are too great." 
Such, in spite of their party prejudice, was the petition of this Orange 
guild. 

In truth, many of the Ascendency faction, while narrowly holding 
out for the maintenance of the exclusive rule of Protestants, would fain 
have seen the national legislature of Ireland restored. This very Alder- 
man Nugent, who so longed for repeal, apparently clung at the same 
time to the narrow system of intolerance which went far to make Irish 
independence in any form impracticable. On the 15th of January, in the 
same year, at a corporation dinner at Morrison's Hotel, amid loud hurrahs, 
and to the tune of "July the First," Sir Thomas Whelan had given the 
celebrated Orange toast, "To the glorious, pious and immortal memory 
of the great and good king William the Third." When Sir Thomas had 
expressed his trust "that the corporation would not be blown about like 



402 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 

a weathercock," Alderman Nugent had risen and proposed the health 
of Sir Thomas for having given that never-to-be-forgotten toast. "If," 
he exclaimed, "the present system" (0/ conciliation) "should be per- 
sisted in, His Majesty's crown would not be safe in six months." 

Barrington gives an amusing full-length version of this Orange toast 
in his "Personal Sketches." I shall give a sentence or two: "To the 
glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good king "Wil- 
liam, who saved us from popery, slavery, arbitrary laws, wooden shoes 
and brass money. May he who would not drink the toast on his bare 
knees be damned, crammed and rammed, with flints and sparables, into 
the great gun of Athlone, blown into the air and fall into the bottomless 
pit of hell — the key in an Orangeman's pockel !" The reader had better 
refer to Barrington and see the toast complete. 

On the 12th of August, this year, an irishman, who was all through 
life a worse enemy to his country than the worst Orangeman, executed 
justice on himself by severing his carotid artery with a knife. I allude 
to the suicide of the baleful and infamous Caatlereagh. In a former 
chapter 1 have already referred to this self-inflicted deed of retributive 
justice. Alison, speaking of the yell of execration with which a London 
crowd (probably chiefly composed of Irishmen) welcomed the destroyer 
of Ireland's independence to his grave in Westminster Abbey, s;iys that 
"savage miscreants raised a horrid shout." Mr. Michel remarks on 
this: "But future ages will probably pronounce, that in all the mob of 
London was no such dreadful miscreant as the man then borne to his 
grave." Even though 1 have little space to spare, I cannot refrain from 
giving some of Lord Byron's remarks on the death of this wretched 
traitor to his country: "As to lamenting his death," says the noble 
bard, "it will be time enough when Ireland has ceased to mourn for his 
birth. As a minister. I, for one of millions, looked upon him as the 
most despotic in intention, and the weakest in intellect, that ever tyran- 
nized over a country. It is the first time, indeed, since the Xorinan-v 

that England has been insulted by a minis/,,- (al least 1 who could not 
speak English, ami that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in 
the language of Mrs. Malaprop." This is one of Byron's most acute 
thrusts. He was a master of sarcasm, and it was strange indeed how- 
it was that he used Ids best talent for Irish subjects. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 403 

I can only make brief mention of the libel case of Wallace versus 
Staunton, in which 0' Conn ell defended Michael Staunton, who was ar- 
raigned on the 25th of May, 1821, for an alleged libel, in the Weekly 
Register, on Thomas Wallace, the king's counsel, afterwards master in 
chancery. He, it may be remembered, was one of the unfortunate John 
Magee's counsel. In spite of O'Connell's able speech, the close of which 
drew forth a burst of applause from a crowded court, a packed jury 
convicted Mr. Staunton, who suffered an imprisonment in Kilmainham. 
Mr. Staunton, through the better portion of his life, was one of the most 
prominent liberal journalists in Dublin and one of O'Connell's most 
devoted partisans. He lived to be lord-mayor of Dublin in the reformed 
corporation. In his latter years, through O'Connell's influence, he also 
became collector-general of metropolitan rates. 

I shall also notice, in passing, a letter written by O'Connell to the 
Dublin Freeman 's Journal, on the 6th of December, 1822, in reference 
to a point of legal etiquette. The Freeman had made an inaccurate state- 
ment in reference to O'Connell's connection with the case of Crowe versus 
Fleming, and O'Connell, in consequence, gives a brief, but lucid, expla- 
nation of the whole matter. " I was counsel," he writes, "for Mr. Crowe 
at the trial of the first cause instituted by him in the Court of Exchequer, 
and tried at Ennis, in the summer assizes, 1819. He was unsuccessful, 
and the cause was at an end. 

"He afterwards filed a bill against Mr. Fleming in the Court of Chan- 
cery. In that cause I was not counsel for either party ; Mr. Crowe had 
a right to leave me out, and he very properly exercised that right. 

" He next instituted this suit in the Court of King's Bench, and issue 
had been for some time joined in it before either party applied to me. 
Mr. Hickman, the defendant's attorney, was the first to do so. He 
offered me a retainer." O'Connell wanted to decline, having been 
"counsel for the plaintiff in the former case." Hickman insisted on 
"the defendant's right" that O'Connell " should accept of his retainer," 
and that he could not, " consistently with professional propriety, refuse." 
O'Connell still hesitated. Finally, the matter was referred to that cele- 
brated lawyer, the late Edward Pennefather, with whom, in spite of 
widely-different political views, O'Connell seems to have been generally 
on not unfriendly terms. O'Connell and Hickman went together to Mr. 



404 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

Pennefather's house. On Hickman's statement, that distinguished au- 
thority "decided," says O'Connell, "that Itvas bound to accept the defend- 
ant's retainer. In that decision, of course, I acquiesced." O'Connell 
touches on a few other points, to which the Freeman had referred inac- 
curately, but I have given the only point of any particular interest in 
the letter. 

Early in the summer of 1822, our hero had sent his family to the 
South of France, chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. O'Connell' s health. They 
had sailed from Dublin to Bordeaux. From that city they had gone to 
the town of Pan, in the department of Basses Pyrenees, where they 
waited till O'Connell could join them. 

In the month of August he managed to leave Ireland for the purpose 
of doing so. He went, however, in the first instance, by Dover and 
Calais, to Paris, in order to visit his distinguished and venerable uncle, 
General Count O'Connell. The political creeds of those two remarkable 
O'Connells were completely at variance. But the fine old soldier did 
not let his unbounded veneration for royalty interfere with the warmth 
and kindness of the reception he gave the great popular chieftain, his 
nephew. In spite of his eighty years and old wounds, of which he bore 
the numerous scars (forty years before, at the memorable siege of Gib- 
raltar, the scattering fragments of a shell from the British batteries had, 
in a moment, wounded him in nine places; a bullet had also carried 
off a portion of his ear), in spite of time and toils, the brave old gen- 
eral was still hale and hearty. He was kind and genial, thoroughly 
Irish, and full of old anecdotes and recollections of the "battles, sieges, 
fortunes" through which he had passed "even from his boyish days." 
He no doubt entertained his kinsman with full many a tale 

" Of most disastrous chances ; 
Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach." 

Our hero now left Paris for the South of France. It was on this 
journey, according to John O'Connell, that he had the adventure in the 
diligence with a good-looking French sea-captain, who, imagining him to 
be an Englishman, tried to provoke him by abusing England, and was 
equally vexed and astonished at Dan's imperturbable good-humor, till 
the true cause was explained to him, when he showed all the true polite- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 405 



ness of a Frenchman. I follow the authority of O'Neill Daunt (and I 
think rightly), in ascribing this adventure to O'Connell's visit to France 
in early life. The reader may call to mind the brief account of this 
incident, which occurs towards the commencement of the fifth chapter 
of this biography. 

During the latter part of this journey, O'Connell had to post. He 
encountered a somewhat unpleasant adventure, such as travellers in 
foreign lands are still occasionally liable to, but which, in those days 
when railway communication was not, they might meet at any time 
without any need to be much surprised. By some misconception of his 
orders (probably some provincial speaker of patois misunderstood O'Con- 
nell's excellent French), he was taken along the route to Bayonne instead 
of that to Pau. He did not discover this mistake till, just at the very 
?lose of a most exhausting day, during the whole of which he had been 
sustaining himself with anticipations of the delight he would feel that 
night in being reunited with Mrs. O'Connell and his family, he learned, 
in answer to an inquiry as to the exact distance yet between him and 
Pau, that, instead of being near his loved ones, he was at the second or 
third last stage from Bayonne, and nearly forty leagues by cross-roads 
(probably infernal) from his real destination. One can easily imagine 
the miserable night-travelling he had to endure, attended, no doubt, 
with any amount of jolting, if not actual danger to life and limb, over 
the ruts and inequalities of the badly-constructed and worse-kept cross- 
roads (the great chcaissees, or main roads, of France, indeed, were even 
then magnificent). After this night of unrest, he had also to travel 
all through the next long, weary day, ere he could rejoin his family 
These amenities of travel, his son tells us, "were long most disagreeably 
remembered." One would expect that a fine, jovial nature, like O'Con- 
nell's, would speedily laugh at such misadventures. At all events, the 
joy of reunion with his much-loved wife and children would soon banish 
any unpleasant remembrances of the road. I fancy that poor creature, 
John O'Connell, paints rather what he would be likely to feel under such 
circumstances himself, than the actual feelings of his father. 

After sojourning for a few weeks at Pau, O'Connell brought his 
family to Tours, where he left them to spend the winter, and then set 
out on his return to his public and legal duties in Ireland. His son 



i06 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



Morgan, who had been back from his South American expedition for about 
two years, and was now on his way to join the Austrian army as a cadet 
in a light dragoon regiment, accompanied him as far as Paris. No doubt 
the gallant veteran, Count O'Connell, was especially rejoiced to see a 
young soldier of his ancient race. Morgan proceeded to Austria ; and 
our hero, having also bid farewell to the old warrior of his race, hastened 
to their native isle.* 

* Authorities for the foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., 
edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" Fagan's "Life of O'Con- 
nell;" "Life of Dr. Doyle," by Fitzpatrick ; "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches 
of his Contemporaries, etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street ;" " The History of Ireland, 
from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time," by John Mitchel ; " History of Europe since 
1815," by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. ; "Memoir* of Lord Wellesley;" "Cobbett's Register:" 
Horace Twiss's " Memoirs of Lord Eldou," etc 



CHAPTER XVII. 

O'CONNELL COMMUNICATES THE PLAN OF A NEW ASSOCIATION TO ShIEL AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE 

in Wicklow — The real Catholic Association founded— Lord Killeen — Union of 
all sections of catholics — the priests become active woekees in the cause— slow 
peogeess of the new movement at fiest — o'connell a delightful travelling com- 
panion — o'connell establishes the "catholic eent " — difficulties he has to ovee- 
come; his peoject sneeeed at; his teemendous eneegy — his complete teiumph ; 
feiends and enemies surprised — the popular element strong in the catholic 
movement for the first time — the association a sort of national goveenment ; 
the multiplicity of its business; o'connell has the lion's shaee — 1824 one of 

THE MOST GLORIOUS YEARS OF HIS LIFE — BOLD OPINIONS OF Dr. DOYLE — "THE SORBONNE 

Manifesto" — The Dissenters not unfriendly to the Catholics — Clever liteeaey 
defendees of the catholic cause — dulness of theie opponents — insanity of slb 
Haecouet Lees and the Oeange faction — Establishment of the "Moening Regis- 
tee" — Mooee's "Captain Rock" — A year's woek in the Association — O'Connell de- 
nounces THE HOSTILE JOUENALS OF ENGLAND AND IeELAND — " THE BEST-ABUSED MAN IN 

the woeld " — o'connell's epistolaey " boees " — aeistoceatic adhesions — death ob 
"Old Hunting-cap" — Aggeegate meeting — -"The New Refoemation" — O'Connell 
aeeested for a speech on bolivae — o'connell and the catholic delegates in 
England — The Catholic Association suppeessed — The duke of Yoek's speech on 
Peel's emancipation bill — -"The wings" — Stephen Coppingee — The Mahon paety — 

COBBETT AND O'CONNELL — AfFAIE WITH LeYNE — FoUETEEN-DAYS' MEETINGS — O'CONNELL 

unconqueeable ; the new Association — O'Connell's amusing diffeeence with the 
peess — Elections; defeat of the Beresfords, etc. — The Order of Liberators — 
Foreign sympathizers — Death of Beic — Death of the duke of Yoek and Loed 
Liverpool — Dan and Remmy Sheehan — Buedett's bill defeated — Napoleon's niece 
at a Catholic meeting — Canning ministee; his death; geeat disappointment of 
the Catholics — Pope and Maguire — Anglesea viceroy — Monster Catholic petition 
■ — Wellington prime minister — Military appearance of the peasantry — Repeal of 
the Test and Corporation acts. 

jE are now fast approaching the triumphant period of O'Con- 
nell's career. In the spring of 1823, at a dinner-party at 
Glencullen, in the county Wicklow, then the residence of 
T. O'Mara, Esq., O'Connell, who had been long revolving in 
his mind the idea of a new Catholic association, mentioned his 
plan to the assembled company. He stated that he intended to propose 
that the new body should consist of two classes of members, the one 
paying a pound, the other a shilling, a year each, and that the working 




408 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

committee should be selected from the former class. Richard Lalor Shiel, 
who was present, gave expression to some doubts as to the practica- 
bility of the plan. He thought the time also unsuitable for such an 
experiment. O'Connell, however, maintained that the time to make 
another effort for emancipation had arrived, and that the plan would 
work; in short, he said he would make it work. It would not be quite 
accurate, then, to state, as many have done, that the first idea of the 
Catholic Association arose in a conversation between O'Connell and 
Shiel at the house of a mutual friend in Wicklow. 

After various preliminary meetings, at which O'Connell takes the 
most conspicuous part, and at one of which he tells his audience that 
"some persons must take the trouble of managing the affairs of the 
Catholics," and at another of which we find him warmly defending Wil- 
liam Cunningham Plunket "as a perfect martyr to his public duty," in 
obedience to a numerously and influentially signed requisition, Nicholas 
Purcell O'Gonnan summons the Catholics of Dublin to assemble in gen- 
eral meeting at Townsend Street Chapel. At this meeting, which took 
place on the 10th of May, a resolution expressive of gratitude to Plunket 
for his services to the Catholics was carried. O'Connell spoke at con- 
siderable length and touched on a variety of topics, lie dwelt ably on 
Ireland's capacity for a prosperous career, enumerating Juer chief re- 
sources. "We live," said he, "in the richest country in the universe, 
and amongst the poorest people." Speaking of the natural gilts of his 
countrymen, he exclaimed: '•Irishmen never combat to be on a level 
with, but always above, their competitors. There was not an army in 
Europe but was led by Irishmen; there is not a coiner of the world bin 
resounds with their achievements. When Maria Theresa founded a new- 
order of honor and merit, out of the first fifty officers who received the 
decoration, no less than forty-two were Irishmen. 

"And why are they not more generally celebrated in the service of 
their country? Let the intolerant, persecuting bigot answer. All they 
want, Cobbett says, is 'a clear stage and fair play.' But that clear 
stage they had hitherto been insultingly refused." It was in this speech 
that he made reference to the friendly overturesof the Orange corpora- 
tion on the occasion of the king's visit. lie nexl defied •"the tongue of 
malignity, the most shameless audacity of that compound of stupidity 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 409 

and slanderous villainy (produced from the crazed brain of a reverend 
fox-hunter, and translated into better English by his coadjutor), The 
Warder," and "that reservoir of baseness and calumny, in which truth 
never appears but by accident, The Mail/' to say that the Catholics 
had, "in the slightest degree, been accessory to the failure of our gra- 
cious monarch's blessed work of conciliation !" He would even appeal 
to the "candor" of these "scribblers," if they could be supposed to 
have any. He then compares the "stupidity" of the English press to 
that of "the bird of night." The fox-hunting parson just alluded to 
was no doubt the notorious Sir Harcourt Lees. Presently our hero calls 
attention to a monstrous letter, written by ex- Attorney-General Saurin 
to Lord JSTorbury, which had been found accidentally. O'Connell styles 
it "this shameless and secret interference of a law-officer in the admin- 
istration of justice." In the letter Saurin begs his "dear Norbury" to 
"judiciously administer a little of this medicine" (certain threats that 
they may lose their seats) "to the King's county and other members of 
Parliament that may fall in his way." I may here .turn aside to remark, 
that this disclosure of his tampering with the independence of a judge 
seriously injured Saurin. Lord Norbury was more lucky. The govern- 
ment — Peel and Goulbourn, the Irish chief- secretary, especially — had 
the effrontery to defend him from the charge of incompetency, when it 
was brought against him, later. It was asserted that, at eighty years 
of age, he was quite as fit to administer justice as at any former period 
of his life. "That is perfectly true," said our hero, "because he was 
not fit to administer justice at any time." At last O'Connell presented 
a petition for his removal. It was entrusted to Mr. Scarlett, afterwards 
Lord Abinger. , He did not move on it, however, for Peel, who at bottom 
was ashamed of Lord Norbury, promised that he would try and induce 
that old judicial zany to retire voluntarily. Norbury, by shifts and 
evasions, put off the evil day of giving up his "racket court" as long 
as possible; indeed, it was not till he saw George Canning rising to the 
head of affairs that he felt his hour was come. Even then he contrived 
to be raised to an earldom before he resigned his judicial seat in favor 
of Plunket. O'Connell's exertions to get this bloodthirsty old buffoon 
removed from the bench deserved the gratitude of his countrymen. It 
is to a special commission of Norbury's that he alludes in his defence 



410 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of Ma gee, where he says, " Why, in one circuit, during the administra- 
tion of the cold-hearted and cruel Camden, there were one hundred indi- 
viduals tried before one judge ; of these ninety-eight were capitally con- 
victed, and ninety-seven hanged! One escaped, but he was a soldier, 
who murdered a peasant, or something of that trivial nature. Ninety- 
seven victims in one circuit! ! /" 

It is not surprising that we rind O'Connell this year, 1824, frequent 
in his denunciations of the unprincipled and venal journals of Dublin 
and London. He describes the claims of several of the newspapers on 
the Association as having "no just foundation." He speaks of "tin.' 
base Dublin press" having turned "upon him and all the honest Cath- 
olics for pursuing the same measures that are now approved of; but in 
spite of that vile press he now held up bis head too high, and enjoyed 
too much the confidence and consideration of the public, to be affected 
by their envious rancor or impotent malignity." Towards the end of 
the year (on the 16th of December), lie makes another onslaught on the 
press. Something he was alleged to have said, on this occasion, about 
the South American liberator, bolivar, caused the authorities to take a 
step to which 1 shall refer presently. On this day, too, he asserted a 
second time — in noticing a boasl made by the London Courier, "that 
polluted vehicle of falsehood and calumny," to the effect "that all the 
generals of the British army were Protestants'" — that "when Maria 
Theresa instituted the Order of the Cross of military merit in Austria. 
of the first fifty individuals who were promoted to that honor, forty-two 
were Irish Catholics." He pledged himself to procure their names, and 
added: "The proportion of Irishmen in the Austrian service could not, 
of course, have been more than as one to three hundred, and yet we find 
forty-two out of fifty whose merit was rewarded with a signal promotion 
to be Irishmen. He" {Mr. O'Connell) "had no fewer than six relatives 
who had attained the rank of general in foreign armies. His lather's 
cousin was governor of Prague and chamberlain to the emperor of 
Austria." This fact greatly astounded the German tourist, Prince 
Puckler-Muskau. "His uncle had" (befori tin- Revolution) "been a gen- 
eral in the French service. But such had been the good elicits even of 
the partial relaxation of the penal code, that of thirty-seven relatives of his, 
within the degree of second cousin, who. before the Revolution, had been 
in the French service, not one was now in any foreign army" (morels the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 411 

pity), "but many had perished in securing the triumphs and establish- 
ing the glory of the Wellingtons and the Packs." They deserved no 
better luck. It appears the meeting was foolish enough to cheer this 
last sentence. In a second speech, delivered by him on this occasion 
our hero sneers at the hypocrisy of the Northern Whig, a Belfast paper. 
He jests upon its management by three Presbyterian parsons, "who 
borrow, as far as I can understand, their best inspirations from ' moun- 
tain dew/ known by the vulgar appellation of 'potteen.'" [Loud 
laughter.) He differs from his friend Lawless about the liberality of 
Belfast, which, he says, "is affected." He denies that it was in Belfast 
that Catholics were first allowed to join volunteer corps. " I totally deny 
my worthy friend's" {Lawless 1 's) "history; Catholics formed the majority, 
and in some instances the entire, of several volunteer corps in the South, 
before they were allowed to join a single corps in the North. In Con- 
naught the distinction never existed ; and even in Dublin, at the boasted 
period of northern liberality, there was an entire corps of Catholics, 
called the Irish Brigade, under, by the way, the present illustrious head 
of the Irish government, the Marquis Wellesley." {Cheers.) O'Connell 
is, perhaps, somewhat too bitter against Belfast in this address. He 
will not admit that the support of Lawless' s paper, The Irishman, by 
that town is any "mighty proof of Belfast liberality." "Why did the 
liberals of Belfast let that honest Deny journal, the Ulster Recorder, 
perish? "Even admitting that some creditable things are to be told of 
the Dissenters who nourished in Belfast in the Augustan days of Ireland, 
does that show that its people of the present time are any better than 
mere pretenders to liberality?" As well might Solicitor-General Joy 
claim credit for liberality because his father and uncle were United 
Irishmen. O'Connell might have added that Henry Joy McCracken, 
who, in '98, commanded the rebels at the battle of Antrim, and was 
hung shortly after, was Joy's first cousin. In this speech our hero calls 
Wolfe Tone "the classic, the elegant and the ill-fated Tone." 

He next speaks of petitions to Parliament. A great one, with a 
million of names, is being prepared. He says, amid great laughter, 
"There will have to be a wagon hired to carry it from the Tower wharf 
to Parliament, for the earl of Donoughmore, in the House of Lords, and 
Sir Francis Burdett, in the House of Commons. They should petition, 



412 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

also, against the building of Protestant churches at the expense of Cath- 
olics. Two or three Protestants in a parish, by applying to the Board 
of First-fruits, could get a sum to build a church, to be levied off the 
parishioners. Then they should petition, "praying to be exempted from 
the payment of tithes and building and repairing of churches," where 
there are no Protestants. Here the meeting seemed to be amused. 
" There will be a petition on the subject of church-wardens ; the law on 
that head in Ireland is a frightful anomaly — a Catholic is made to fill, 
but cannot vote for, the office of church-warden. 

" In England, the Dissenters and Jews are exempted from serving 
the office. None fill the office without taking an oath which the Cath- 
olics cannot take. The oath binds him to attend divine service, to pro- 
vide bread, etc., for the communion-table, and generally to see that 
things are kept in order at divine service; two or three Protestants, 
with the concurrence of the minister, may, perhaps, in spite, elect him 
church- warden ; his conscience will not allow him to act, yet he is held 
responsible. What will the English people say to this? Will they not 
be astonished? and will they not applaud the Association for their 
struggles to see justice done to a suffering people?" Here O'Connell 
seems for the moment strangely credulous in his ideas of British sense 
of justice towards the Irish people. 

He returns to the press. Again he lashes the Courier. He suspects 
that the assailant of Ireland in that journal is "some renegade Irish- 
man. " He cannot express his "detestation and horror" of this scrib- 
bler. He is a traducer of the "defenceless female" and "the virtuous 
priest. Wherever he went, his track could be traced by the slime of 
slander which he left behind him." (Cheers.) O'Connell defends the 
priests against the attacks of this anonymous scribe: "They did not 
delight, with a morbid appetite for all that was degrading and disgust- 
ing, to gloat over the transcendent turpitude of the mitred monster, nor 
over the skibbereen pastor; they did not seek, curiously, to inquire what 
most powerful cause could induce a parson to give up £1500 a year, 
but they very well knew it was not a desire to abstain from the comforts 
and conveniences of life" (cheers) ; "they very well knew it was not a wish 
to live like an anchorite. All he would say was, that there was a most 
potent cause for all this, but he would not pollute his lips, nor horrify 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 413 

his hearers, by more than distantly alluding to that cause, and he de- 
sired it to be understood that the skibbereen parsons owed much to their 
forbearance." However, he does not think all papers as bad as the 
Courier. He praises the Dublin Evening Post, then edited by the late 
Frederick William Conway, who, at a later period, became its proprietor. 
Conway, though then a Protestant, had been for a time one of the sec- 
retaries of the Catholic Association. Some London journals, too, are 
commended warmly, as deserving the gratitude of the Catholic body. 
The British Traveller, The Morning Chronicle (he had some time pre- 
viously regretted the death of its former proprietor, Perry) and Tht 
Examiner are friendly, honest and talented. In his latter years, indeed, 
he retracted his good opinion of the last-named journal and denounced 
its editor as "the miscreant of the Examine?*." John O'Connell conjec- 
tures that the attacks on O'Connell and the Repeal cause, which pro- 
voked this retaliation on the Examiner, were caused by some censures 
that had been uttered by our hero "on the malpractices of a person con- 
nected by family with the leading writer" (Albany Fonblanque, I suppose) 
of that clever paper. In this sharp review of the press, as it existed in 
1824, O'Connell, comparing the anti-Catholic journals of London and 
Dublin, observes: "Bad as the London prints are, they have, however, 
some taste for decency; they do not, in general, outrage every social 
feeling, like The Mail and Star, of Dublin." 

In this year, 1824, we find O'Connell announcing the co-operation 
of various charitable and religious societies of Dublin with the Associa- 
tion. Forty-eight collectors of such societies volunteered to assist in 
collecting the rent under the superintendence of the clergy. We find 
him protesting against an increased grant to the Kildare street society ; 
moving that Mr. Plunket should, in spite of his doubts of the utility 
of then doing so, be requested to urge the Catholic claims in Parliament ; 
taking the Irish Quakers to task for their inconsistency in petitioning 
"for the relief of the West India slaves," while they remained "utterly 
regardless of the most miserable condition of the wretched bondsmen 
of their own country." Some of the Irish Quakers, when pressed hard 
to imitate the more liberal example of their English brethren, would 
fain have excused their indifference by saying "they were no politicians.'" 
O'Connell held this plea in light account, for it was his maxim that "the 



414 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



man who says he has no politics generally contrives to act in accordance 
with the worst." On the whole, however, O'Connell had great respect 
lor the Society of Friends. Indeed, my late friend, Father Kenvon, and 
other leaders of the Young Ireland party, condemned his latter-day pol- 
icy as savoring of "fat, sensual Quakerism." O'Connell also recom- 
mends that Lord Grey and Mr. Brougham should be made to understand 
that the Catholics intended their petition should pray ••for a reformation 
in the temporalities of the Church establishment in Ireland ; . . . for 
the better regulation of juries; . . . the disfranchisement of the exist- 
ing rotten borough corporations," as well as -for the removal of the dis- 
qualifications to which Catholics are now subject;" though the above- 
named senatorial patrons of the Catholic cause, at this time, only agreed 
with the last prayer (regretting that the Catholics had increased their 
demands), and refused to support the other parts of the petition. 

Our hero's attention is also occupied by recent Orange riots and 
murders in the county Fermanagh, and he l>usie> himself in getting up 
petitions for the disarming of Orangemen. Strange to say. considering 
the High-Tory polities of Mr. Blackburn, he approves of that celebrated 
lawyer's appointment by the marquis of Wellesley "to conduct the Fer- 
managh inquiry." He considers "thai gentleman's conduct most satis- 
factory to the public, serviceable to the government and creditable to 
himself." lie denounces the Ribbonmen, and writes an argumentative 
address to the people of Ireland -against Ribbonism, Whitehovism and 
other unlawful societies." IP' speaks with natural indignation of a 
"murder by the police in Meath." Various other subjects employ his 
energies, lie takes Goulburn, the chief secretary for Ireland, to task 
for his false boast that appointments, to the value of £3000 per annum, 
had been bestowed, under Lord Wellesley's government, upon Catholic 
banisters. It was true that Mr. Blake, an Irish member of the English 
bar and the marquis's friend, had received an appointment worth that 
amount, but, in the words of O'Connell's resolution, "since the Catholic 
barristers had become eligible to many offices, not one" [of th Irish bar) 
'•had been appointed by the government" Another day, pursuant to 
notice, our hero moves "a resolution thanking Dr. Doyle for his letter 
upon the union of churches." and compares that Learned prelate to the 
illustrious archbishop of Cambray, Fenelon. We find him properly 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 415 

recommending the Association not to notice or trouble themselves with 
anonymous letters, pretending to narrate tales of Ca'tholic grievances in 
the North. He says, amusingly enough, that he "himself would be 
almost ruined in postage charges, by anonymous letters, if the author- 
ities at the post-office had not been so considerate as to take them off 
his hands. These letters conveyed plenty of abuse and threats of all 
kinds. Indeed, he had recently received no less than twelve letters, 
intimating to him that he might soon expect the favor of having Ms 
throat cut by the Orangemen." (Laughter.) Here a voice from behind 
our hero exclaimed, unmeaningly or oddly, "And they are the only 
people who would take your part." Upon which Dan cries out, "Heaven 
protect me from them, at any rate. I would be sorry to try them!" 
(Laughter.) 

As we are on the subject of letters, I may as well pause here to say, 
that O'Connell was continually bored by queer letters on the most ridic- 
ul msly trivial subjects. Doubtless the patience of most public characters 
is sorely tried by absurd correspondents. One day a letter addressed to 
him arrived from New York. As he did not remember having any cor- 
respondent in that city whose communication could be worth the postage, 
he was about to return the letter unopened. Curiosity, however, got the 
better of this wise intention. He was rewarded by finding that the 
trans- Atlantic epistle contained a minute description of a Queen Anne's 
farthing recently found by the writer, with a modest request that " Ire- 
land's Liberator" might negotiate the sale of said farthing in London, 
where, as many sage individuals had informed him, the wonderful far- 
thing might prove a fortune to the wise and lucky writer. Another 
New Yorker, a certain preposterous Peter Waldron, wrote the following 
whimsical letter to O'Connell : " Sir, — I have discovered an old paper, 
by which I find that my grandfather, Peter Waldron, left Dublin about 
the year 1730. You will very much oblige me by instituting an imme- 
diate inquiry who the said Peter Waldron was ; whether he possessed 
any property in Dublin or elsewhere, and to what amount ; and in case 
that he did, you will confer a particular favor on me by taking imme- 
diate steps to recover it, and, if successful, forwarding the amount to me 
at New York." One time a Protestant parson writes to Dan that he 
and his family are praying for his conversion to Protestantism. The 



416 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

writer is anxious to have a bout at controversy with so renowned an 
antagonist. Similarly scribbles one Lacking-ton, a Methodist. A fair 
American begs that he will help her to get up a raffle. The fact of one 
of her relations having written a work in praise of Ireland will, as a 
matter of course, induce "Ireland's most distinguished son" to devote 
to her project tbe time necessary to make it a success. Letters asking 
patronage came, it may readily be guessed, 

" Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
In Vallombrosa." 

" Every Dody," says our hero, "writes to me about everything, and the 
applicants for places, without a single exception, tell me that one word 
of mine will infallibly get them what they want. ; One wvrdV Oh, 
how I am sick of that 'one word!' " 

Some were even impertinent enough to offer him a "hand-over" for 
his patronage. One of these scamps he threatened with a prosecution. 
When another impudent rascal promised to call for a reply. O'Connell 
told his servant to kick him out of doors as soon as he came to the house. 
Country-folks sometimes addressed him in a singularly grotesque style. 
One of these commenced an epistle to him with "Awful sir!" Anony- 
mous letters he condemned to the flames unread. "I just look to see 
what signature the letter boars, and if I find none, I fling it into the 
fire." In all the anonymous communications he ever got, he found but 
one valuable suggestion. 'That."' says he, "was the contrast between 
the Irish and British elective franchises, and an excellent hint it was. I 
think I've worked it pretty well, too." 

Returning from this digression to the business of the Association in 
1824, we see O'Connell advocating an address to the Crown, praying 
"for the enlargement of the commission for inquiring into the state of 
education in Ireland." He objects to several of the commissioners. 
especially to Mr. John Leslie Foster, on account of his being "the pro- 
fessed and unyielding opponent of the rights of six millions of his coun- 
trymen." At the same time he admits the honorable way in which Mr. 
Foster discharges "his duty as a public officer." O'Connell snys also: 
"The great and serious disadvantage of Inning strangers upon tln'^ 
commission is, that they will naturally lie influenced by the deservedly 




CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 417 

high character which Mr. Foster bears as counsel for the revenue.'' 
Our hero is tormented with some squabbles about giving Mr. Edward 
Dwyer, as assistant-secretary of the Association, a salary of £160 per 
annum. Some objectors desired to fix the salary at £100 per annum. 
John O'Connell says, in his inelegant diction : " A spirit of small economy 
. . . often very much calculated to impede and cripple important polit- 
ical moves, manifested itself ... in respect to the management of — to 
use the stereotyped phrase on those occasions — the people's money." 
He describes this sort of opposition as a cheap way of winning notoriety. 
Mr. Dwyer's appointment was finally carried. John O'Connell says that 
his father showed, "through life, a singular quickness in finding out 
the exact man wanted for any special purpose of the agitation," and 
that "events proved how well and rightly the choice had been made" 
when he fixed his eye without any hesitation upon Edward Dwyer. 

At one of its meetings, the Association busies itself about sending 
down Mr. Kavanagh to prosecute the offender, in the case of an Orange 
murder in Ballibay. O'Connell discourses upon "Orange signs," and 
refers to the quarrels of two bodies of English Catholics. He discusses 
the propriety of contributing from the funds of the Association to the 
establishment of a Catholic paper in London. He ridicules the assump- 
tion of superiority on the part of the English Catholic Association, 
which, compared to the Irish body, is no more "than a cock-boat to a 
man-of-war, or a canoe following in the wake of a seventy-four." These 
English Catholics can only get into "the haven of emancipation under 
the lee and protection of the Irish Catholic Association." Still he was 
glad to see "the imperious aristocracy of English Catholics" active. 
Shortly after we find the English bodies on good terms with each other 
and with the Irish Association, and O'Connell pointing out to the Eng- 
lish provincial associations the way to evade the act against correspond- 
ing societies "by forming themselves into independent societies." On 
this and other occasions in the same year he pronounces the most glow- 
ing panegyrics on Cobbett. He calls him "unpurchasable," "their 
gifted advocate," and talks of "his manly and transcendent intellect." 
"Had Cobbett," says O'Connell, "been inclined to sell his services, is it 
too much to say, that when the most disgusting carrion has been pur- 
chased in the market of corruption, what would they not have given for 



418 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

a writer like Cobbett?" The Association must take Cobbetfs Register 
and post up "a list of his various works in their rooms." 

JEneas McDonnell is appointed general Parliamentary agent of the 
Catholic Association in London. O'Connell notices the fact that inti- 
macy has ceased between him and that gentleman, in order "to show 
that his recommendation did not proceed from personal feeling, but a 
conviction of Mr. McDonnell's abilities." John O'Connell says this 
appointment was "in a manner forced" on his father "by a party . . . 
prompt to thwart and counteract his views." The "pious jEneas" 
wanted a salary of £500 per annum; however, the Association gave him 
only £300. For this yearly stipend he gave them voluminous "special 
correspondence." attended "the House" on nights of Irish debate, and 
carried on "an occasional little bit of petty diplomacy with the gracious 
patrons of the Catholic cause among the members of the two Houses 
of Parliament." According to Thomas Kennedy, the "pious iEneas" 
knew how to draw up a nice little bill. When the Association finally 
wound up its affairs, a committee had to investigate certain claims of 
Mr. McDonnell's. In his account were such amusing items as "fifteen 
shillings paid fur a copy of 'Lalla Kookh'" and "picked out of my 
pocket in the gallery of the House of Commons five pounds." Whether 
or not these were recognized by the committee of investigation as 
legitimate expenses, I am not in a position to speak with absolute 
certainty. 

" Religious liberty for Catholics and Protestant Dissenters ; education 
on liberal and just principles; abolition of church-rates; diminution of 
tithes and to facilitate the delivery in kind; abolition of corporation 
abuses, monopolies and powers of levying money; the administration 
of justice, rejection of party sheriffs and party juries, correction of the 
list of magistrates and great diminution of their powers, so as to bring 
them as near the common law as possible;" reformation of various courts 
and jurisdictions; the enabling "ecclesiastical persons to make leases of 
lives or forty-one years;" redress of local grievances, particularly the abo- 
lition of the Dublin Paving Board; and "the introduction of poor-rates " 
— all these subjects were ably reviewed by O'Connell in the course of 
this year. At a public meeting, in February, he had vigorously opposed 
the claim of a right to lew tolls made by the corrupt Dublin corporation 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 419 

Nor does he ever let slip any favorable opportunity of advocating the 
repeal of the union. On the subject of poor-laws his opinions under- 
went a change in his latter days. In fact, he was vehemently opposed 
to the system of poor-laws ultimately established in Ireland. In addi- 
tion to these topics, he notices that "the press of France had challenged 
the press of England to the proof, but as yet that challenge had been 
unaccepted. L'Etoile" [the Star) "had proved that the English Dis- 
senters — one-third of the population — were inadmissible by law to all 
offices of trust and power, while it demonstrated that in France the 
Dissenters from the Catholic Church, who did not amount to one-fiftieth 
part of the population, were not only tolerated, but admissible to all 
offices of trust and power — were not only admissible, but actually ad- 
mitted." [Cheers.) He also expresses sympathy with the struggling 
patriots of Greece and the heroic devotion of Missolonghi. We find 
him in communication with a Mr. George Parker Tevers, living in the 
Rue de Grenelle, who proposes to procure the insertion of articles in the 
French and other Continental papers. Tevers suggests "that his pro- 
posal should not be made public, as the advocacy of the French press, 
if considered spontaneous, would be more serviceable." O'Connell, how- 
ever, is determined "that there shall be no secrets in the Association " He 
takes occasion at the same time to make an onslaught on the Morning 
Post and "the slave of the Courier." 

Aristocratic adhesions (Protestant and Catholic) to the Association are 
numerous this year. Besides the magnates already mentioned as having 
speedily joined the Catholic ranks, we have Colonel Talbot, afterwards 
Lord Talbot de Malahide, colleague of Colonel White in the representation 
of Dublin county, expressing his approval of the objects and conduct of 
the Association, and enclosing his subscription of £10. Colonel White, 
the other county member, sent £5. O'Connell passed a high eulogium 
on each of these gentlemen. He announced that Lord Kenmare and his 
brother, the Honorable Captain Browne, would send in their donations. 
Lord Donoughmore concurs with the Association. The Hon. G. Agai 
Ellis writes, enclosing his own and Viscount Clifden's subscriptions of 
£10 each. William Villiers Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Decies 
encloses £20. Nugent of Pallas, or Lord Eiverston, one of the Catholic 
lords (his peerage was one of the creations of James the Second, un- 



420 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL 

recognized by the house of Brunswick; this branch of the house of 
Nugent, however, has recently inherited the earldom of Westmeath), 
sent in a subscription of £10. O'Connell was anxious that the king 
should be petitioned to restore to this gentleman his title. A Mr. Pallas 
commissions our hero to hand in £5, the subscription of General O'Far- 
rell Ambrose, and to propose that gallant veteran, who "had been thirty- 
nine years in the Austrian army and had seen thirty-four campaigns," 
as a member of the Association. In November, £10 are handed in 
from the good Lord Cloncurry, with a patriotic letter, in which the fol- 
lowing passage occurs : " The last wish I ever heard from Grattan was 
for the repeal of the union. If all Ireland were polled, I do not believe 
that out of the seven millions, one hundred votes could be against the 
repeal of that finishing act of Ireland's degradation. In that repeal I 
place my best, my almost only, hope of her regeneration."' The Catho- 
lic prelates, too (for example, Dr. Plunket, bishop of Meath, the oldest 
member of the Irish hierarchy, and Dr. Kelly, bishop of Droinore), con- 
tinued to give the Association the sanction of their approval. Though 
last not least, we have, on the 10th of December, a long Idler from 
O'Connell's uncle, "Old Hunting-cap," or Maurice of Darrynane, with 
his subscription of £10. On this occasion O'Connell's brother, James, 
occupied the chair. The reading of the old man's long letter drew forth 
enthusiastic plaudits from the crowded meeting. Mr. Dominick Rouayne, 
afterwards member of Parliament for Clonmel, moved, and Mr. Shiel 
seconded, the motion for its insertion on the minutes. Our hero said: 
"The venerable writer had now lived for nearly an entire century, a 
victim to the cruel penal code; yet his intellect was as unclouded, and 
his heart as warm to the adopted child of his affections, the cause of 
Irish liberty and Irish rights, as when his youthful indignation had first 
been aroused against the injustices and oppressions which had so long 
been the order of the day against those professing the Catholic religion. 

"But he" (Mr. O'Connell) "hoped that his venerable relative would 
at last witness the opening of a brighter day." 

Alas! poor old "Hunting-cap" lived not to see that brighter day. 
Shortly after this incident, he died, at the advanced age of ninety-six 
years. He left Darrynane A.bbey and landed property, said to have been 
worth £4000 a year, to our hero. 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 

O'CONNELL AND SHIEL GO TO ENGLAND AS A DEPUTATION FROM THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION— PeEL'S 
CRAFTY MEASURE AMUSING INCIDENT AT WOLVERHAMPTON, ETC., ETC. 

At the meeting of December the 16th, the Association had appointed 
a deputation, consisting of O'Connell, Shiel and Brie (the last-named 
gentleman to act as secretary), to proceed to England. On their way to 
London they were to visit the Catholic associations in Liverpool and 
such other places as they might deem fit ; they were to concert with the 
English Catholics the best means " of laying before the English people 
the sufferings and merits of the Catholics of Ireland." O'Connell an- 
nounced, amid immense cheering, "that they" (the deputation) "would 
travel at their own expense, without infringing upon the funds of the 
Association ;" and, though it was " a sacrifice in a professional point of 
view to leave town at that juncture, he was happy to have an oppor- 
tunity of making such a sacrifice to the interests of his country." 

Early in 1825, the deputation, consisting of the three just named 
and some others, proceeded to England. But a blow was about to be 
struck at the Association in the Imperial Parliament. Though Ireland 
was quite peaceful, the king's speech on the 3d of February described 
the proceedings of the Irish Catholic Association as "irreconcilable with 
the constitution" and calculated "to endanger the peace of society and 
to retard the course of national improvement." Chief-Secretary Groul- 
bourn succeeded in carrying through both Houses a bill for the "Suppres- 
sion of Unlawful Associations in Ireland." This was intended to destroy 
the Catholic Association, though a perfectly legal body. In vain, on the 
night of the 18th of February, Brougham pleaded vehemently against 
it, while the Irish deputation were sitting below the bar listening with 
delight to the rush of his mighty eloquence. We shall see presently 
how easily O'Connell, to use one of his own favorite phrases, "drove a 
3oach-and-six through this (Algerine) act of Parliament." 

At the same time that the government introduced this arbitrary bill, 
they brought forward a meagre measure of emancipation, accompanied 
with two crafty provisions in the nature of "securities," which were 



422 THE LIFE 0F DANIEL 0'CONNELL. 

called "the wings'' of the relief bill. Thus, while Catholics, both in 
England and Ireland, were to be admitted to Parliament and municipal 
corporations, on the other hand, the forty-shilling freeholders were to 
be disfranchised, and the Catholic clergy were to become stipendiaries of 
the British government. A bishop was to receive from the treasury a 
salary of £1000 per annum, a dean £300, a parish priest £200, a curate 
£60. This measure, with its accompanying safeguards of English 
supremacy, was the offspring of Peel's crafty brain. The regium donum 
had made the Presbyterian clergy, the Maynooth grant had made many 
professors, so subservient to British power, that they might be always 
counted on to exercise their influence over their Hocks and pupils against 
the cause of Ireland's independence. The evident intention of Peel's 
measure was to reduce the great body of the Catholic clergy to the same 
subserviency. Luckily, this bill, after passing the Commons, was de- 
feated on the second leading in the Lords. The heir-presumptive to 
the crown, the Duke of York, signalized himself by his hostility to the 
Cut holies on this occasion, lie solemnly declared that he would never 
give his consent to their claims — "never, so help him God!" 

Meanwhile the Catholic deputation spent a pleasant time in Eng- 
land. Shiel has written a most amusing sketch of their journey to 
London and their doings in that Babylonish metropolis, lie tells us 
how the party of deputies, to which he had annexed himself, travelled 
in a barouche of O'Connell's; how people at inns asked "Mho the gen- 
tlemen were?" how O'ConneH, seated on the box of his barouche, "with 
a large cloak folded about him, which seemed to be a revival of the 
famous Irish mantle," attracted tin; larger portion of the public gaze; 
how, on arriving at Wolverhampton, in a spirit of enthusiastic hero- 
worship, they went in search of Dr. Milner. He relates how hard it 
was to find him out; how "a damsel of thirty, with a physiognomy 
which was at once comely and demure, replied to us at first with a mix- 
ture of affected ignorance and ostentatious disdain, until Sir Thomas 
Esmonde, 'a marvellous proper man' in every sense of the word, ad- 
dressed the fair votress of Wesley with a sort of chuck- under-t he-chin 
manner (as Leigh Hunt would call it), and induced the fair Methodist to 
reply, 'If you had asked me for the popish priest instead of the Cath- 
olic bishop, I should have told you that he lived yonder,' pointing to a 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 423 

large but desolate-looking building before us." He then relates how 
the learned prelate, though by no means discourteous, gave them a 
reception thoroughly English in its frigidity; how, indeed, the aged man 
totally forgot O'Connell till he told him who he was; how the decaying 
embers of his spirit were only kindled up by the "odium theologicum^ 
(theological hatred), when Shiel, with sly and malicious pleasantry, men 
tioned the name of the old controversialist's former antagonist, Charles 
Butler. These and many other entertaining particulars are to be found 
in Shiel' s agreeable sketch of this memorable "Journey to London."' 

Money is the great test of worth in England. The Catholic rent 
made the Association doubly respectable in the eyes of the Mammon- 
worshiping Englishmen. The members of the deputation were courted 
by the leading liberal orators, Brougham, Burdett and others. At 
Brougham's table. O'Connell and Shiel dined in company with four 
dukes, the former sitting between the dukes of Devonshire and Leinster. 
They were even feasted in the gorgeous banquet-halls of the great Whig 
lords. O'Connell, Lord Killeen, Shiel and others were invited to Norfolk 
House to meet an assemblage of men of the highest rank in England. 
Among the guests were the dukes of Sussex, Devonshire and Leinster. 
Lords Grey, Fitzwilliam, Shrewsbury, Donoughmore, Stourton, Clifford, 
Arundel, Mr. Butler of Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Denman 
were also there. "I was dazzled," says Shiel, "with the splendor of an 
entertainment to which I had seen nothing to be compared. Norfolk 
House is one of the finest in London. It was occupied at one period by 
members of the royal family, and the duke mentioned that George the 
Third was born in the room in which we dined. I passed through a 
long series of magnificent apartments in crimson and gold. There was 
no glare of excessive light in this vast mansion. The massive lamps, 
suspended from the embossed and gilded ceilings, diffused a chequered 
illumination and left the deep distance in the dusk. The transition to 
the chamber, where the company were assembled, and which was glaring 
with light, presented a brilliant contrast. . . . The duke of Norfolk 
came forward to meet us, and received us in the most cordial manner." 
Shiel was most pleased with Lord Fitzwilliam. This venerable noble- 
man brightened up when Ireland was spoken of. " He reverted with a 
Nestorian pride to the period of his own government, and stated that 



■124 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

he had preserved the addresses presented to him by the Catholics of 
Ireland as the best memorials of his life." His great wish seemed to be 
to live to see emancipation. Introduced thus into the society of the 
royal duke of Sussex, the dukes of Norfolk, Devonshire and other pow- 
erful nobles, O'Connell for a moment yielded to their insidious blandish- 
ments. His antagonism to "the wings" softened. He began to think 
that emancipation, so long delayed, could not be obtained on any terms 
more favorable than those now apparently within reach. The most influ- 
ential Catholics of England were far from being hostile to " the wings." 
The Whigs wished the bill to pass with "the wings," expecting that it 
would give them additional Parliamentary partisans. Of course, Shiel, 
even more easily than O'Connell, fell into this way of viewing the pros- 
pects of the Catholic question. 

A motion made by Brougham, that O'Connell and Shiel should be 
heard at the bar of the Commons on behalf of the Association, was de- 
feated. In the debate Peel, opposing the motion, committed an act of 
gross indiscretion, a most unusual thing with him. Referring to an 
address presented by the Association to the venerable "United Irish" 
leader, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, "he became," says Mr. Shiel, 
'heated with victory, and, cheered as he was repeatedly by his multi- 
tudinous partisans, turned suddenly towards the part of the House 
where the deputies were seated, and looking triumphantly at Mr. 
O'Connell, with whom he forgot for a moment that he had been once 
engaged in a personal quarrel, shook his hand with scornful exult- 
ation, and asked whether the House required any better evidence than 
the address of the Association "to an attainted traitor." Brougham 
made a vehement and crushing reply to this ebullition of bad taste and 
bitter, bigoted feeling. He asked Peel, " How dare he speak thus of one 
on whom his sovereign had smiled?" alluding to George the Fourth's 
gracious reception of Mr. Rowan. 

O'Connell, though not allowed to plead against the suppression of 
the Association at the bar of the House of Commons, where he could 
easily have shown that the Catholic organization was in no respect 
illegal, and that, in the words of one of the Irish petitions against the 
hostile bill, "the 'rent' was not a tax levied on the Irish, people, but a 
voluntary contribution" for the purpose of educating the poor and oh- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 425 

tainmg legal redress for the peasantry, yet found an opportunity of 
producing a great impression on the English Catholics, by his powerful 
oratory, at a vast meeting held in the " Freemasons' Hall," London, over 
which the duke of Norfolk, England's premier duke, presided. O'Con- 
nell was very solicitous about the impression he should produce on this 
occasion. Even Charles Butler, a severe but excellent critic, was greatly 
struck with his eloquence ; and Butler was scarcely likely to be a judge 
partial to our hero. O'Connell was also examined before the House of 
Lords on the subject of " Pastorini's prophecies." As evidence of their 
disloyalty, the Catholic clergy were accused of circulating this book. 
O'Connell's testimony went to show that the Catholic clergy and laity 
had in reality discouraged its circulation. A letter of Dr. Doyle's had dis- 
countenanced the "prophecies" in the strongest terms. O'Connell main- 
tained that the.) were printed and circulated by "persons not of the 
Catholic persuasion." His acuteness also detected that the mention of 
the year 1825, as the ominous year, was a misprint for 1828. It appears 
that "the prophecy fixes upon a period of three hundred years" from 
the establishment of the Protestant persuasion — that is, from the 14th 
or 19th of April, 1529 — for the return of Protestants to the ancient 
faith. The calculation, then, was made by Pastorini from 1528. This 
whole monstrous humbug is a subject of little interest now. However, 
it is proper to make this slight reference to it, because O'Connell's replies 
to the interrogatories put to him created in the minds of those who lis- 
tened to him a large belief in the range of his mental powers. His 
questioners seemed to think Dr. Doyle the only Irishman who could 
enter into intellectual rivalry with him. On the other hand, O'Connell 
was far from reciprocating the complimentary feeling. He rather coin- 
cided with Dr. Doyle's contemptuous criticism of those " potent, grave 
and reverend signiors:" "Pshaw! such silly questions as they put! I 
think in all my life I never encountered such a parcel of old fools." 

This "journey to London," however, produced, at the time, no favor- 
able practical result. On the contrary, while the emancipation bill, 
even with its two " wings " — the abolition of the forty-shilling free- 
holders and the payment of the Catholic clergy — was defeated, the bill 
to suppress the Association passed. " There can be no question," says 
Fagan, that O'Connell was treated with great perfidy in the course of 



426 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

these negotiations. He was led to believe that emancipation was cer- 
tain, provided it were accompanied with ' the wings.' Every one at the 
time in London, who was mixed in the matter, believed it. Blake, the 
chief remembrancer, who was then in London, and on terms of political 
intercourse with the leading political men of the day, has since often 
stated that the matter was settled. Phmket was himself deceived, and 
was thus the means of deceiving O'Connell and the rest of the deputa- 
tion. The system of deceit was earned so far as to induce O'Connell to 
attend the levee of the duke of York." It would appear, from a state- 
ment of the late Richard Barrett, proprietor of the Dublin Pilot, that, 
Avhile the fate of the bill was pending, O'Connell called very early one 
morning at Plunket's residence in London, by appointment; that 
Phmket rose hurriedly, came out to him, shook him heartily by the 
hand, and said, "O'Connell, I congratulate you ; the conference has not 
broken up an hour. 1 got up to tell you all is decided; Catholic eman- 
cipation will be granted before a fortnight, and without any of the con- 
ditions to which you objected." These were no doubt some of the eccle- 
siastical ones. Canning, Huskisson, even Lord Liverpool and Peel, had 
agreed to grant the measure. Unfortunately, however, Lord Eldon'e 
concurrence had nol been secured. O'Connell thought he might have 
been won over. At this time a Mr. Pendergasl was stopping in the 
house with Phmket. In some manner he became cognizant of the 
nature of the interview. He told all about it in the clubs. When Lord 
Eldon heard what had been resolved On, he hastened to the duke of 
York and inflamed his bigotry. After having delivered his furious 
speech againsl emancipation, the duke followed his brother, the king, U 
the theatre, where he was warmly received. The king and the heii- 
presumptive were evidently againsl the measure. Its failure was the 
consequence. Lord Liverpool, the premier, soon veered round and deliv- 
ered what was called his "ether speech," in order to remove the im- 
pression that he had given way on the subject of emancipation, lie 
was accustomed to take ether on important occasions. To the influence 
of an overdose were attributed sundry expressions of unusual vehemence. 
He stated "that the late Catholic relief bill was a heap of trash and non- 
sense;" "that it was a disgraceful measure;'' that it was so sent up by the 
Commons as to place the Lords "in a most awkward situation;" that if it 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 427 

became law "the Protestant succession would not be worth five far- 
things," and other extravagancies in the same style. 

The Edinburgh Review gave high praise to the conduct of the dele- 
gation in London. It also contended that the debate in Parliament had 
clearly brought out the fact that the Association had restored and main- 
tained the peace of Ireland. "Of eleven counties," writes the reviewer, 
"half a year before proclaimed by the Curfew Act, not one now remained 
disturbed. Rents were peacefully paid, Captain Rock no longer trained 
the nightly bands of depredators," etc. The Association, acting under 
the legal advice of O'Connell, to satisfy the law, dissolved itself. This 
was in accordance with his usual tactics. Of course, immediately after- 
wards it was reconstituted under the name of "The New Catholic Asso- 
ciation." This he humorously called "driving a coach-and-six through 
an act of Parliament." In truth, the bill for the suppression of the 
Association became practically a dead letter. The Association virtually 
lived and pursued its triumphant career. Before their apparent disso- 
lution, the members published a valedictory address, in which, with a 
certain "honest pride," they asserted their claims to the gratitude of 
the country. The establishment of "the rent" alone formed a substan- 
tial claim to that gratitude. At this period they had more than £12,000 
over their expenses lodged in bank. The weekly income of the Associ- 
ation had sometimes approached £2000. 

O'Connell's popularity was temporarily shaken by his consenting to 
the proposal to disfranchise "the forty-shilling freeholders." We find 
him engaged in epistolary controversy with Jack Lawless upon this 
subject. The Catholic nobles — indeed,' the Whig aristocracy of England 
in general — had, by their honeyed blandishments, beguiled our hero into 
a momentary delusion. He had begun to think that it was best to make 
the required sacrifices, in order to gain immediate emancipation. "There 
is in our country," said he, " an inexhaustible mine of intellectual and 
physical strength." This mine he was led to believe would be developed 
forthwith, if Burdett's Catholic relief bill were at once passed. The vast 
natural capabilities and resources of Ireland would lie no longer idle and 
unworked. Ireland would rival England in wealth. And then, though 
he confessed that he had consented to the disfranchisement of such of 
the forty-shilling freeholders as "held their lands at a rack-rent, or who 



428 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

were tenants in common," he asserted that he had never agreed to the 
disfranchisement of those whose condition was at all like that of the 
English yeomanry. His popularity, however, was speedily re-estab- 
lished. When he found that it was likely to be weakened by his facility 
and compliance on the question of "the wings," he promptly and frankly 
retracted, and took his stand once more with the vast majority of his 
countrymen for unqualified emancipation. "It had been well, indeed," 
says Mr. Mitchel, "if he had firmly held his ground against both those 
wings to the last." 

His reception at Howth, on the first of June, 1825, on his return 
from London, was warm and flattering in the extreme. The small town 
and the landing-place were crowded with thousands of people, in vehi- 
cles of all sorts, on horseback and on foot. All these were eagerly 
straining their eyes — many gazing through telescopes — to catch the first 
glimpse of "the man of the people" on the deck of the approaching 
vessel. "There he is;" "Where?" "That's not he;" "It is;"— such 
cries arose excitedly and continuously on all sides. Rapturous shouts 
a lose as his tall form was seen moving from the quarter-deck and along 
the gangway to the shore. The shouts were redoubled, and friends 
thronged around him to grasp his hand, as his foot touched the shore. 
Seated in an open carriage with his wife and two daughters, lie drove 
along towards Dublin, followed by a mighty train. In Dublin the popu- 
lace took the horses from his carriage and drew him home to Merrion 
Square in triumph. On appearing in the balcony of his house he was 
greeted with tremendous acclamations. "I truly pity," said he, "those 
who cannot love such a people, and would not die for such a country as 
Ireland." 

A few clays after his arrival in Dublin he attended an aggregate 
meeting in Anne Street Chapel. At this meeting Stephen Coppinger, 
one of the most consistent and persevering champions of the Catholic 

cause, delivered an able speech in support of a resolution that a c - 

mittee be appointed to prepare petitions to both Houses of Parliament 
for the full and unqualified emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland." 
He gave some hard hits to the duke of York for his " so-help-ine-God" 
harangue. "It was a pity that this pious bishop of Osnaburg" (the 
royal duke, though a layman, was bishop of Osnaburg in his father's elec- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 429 

torate of Hanover) — "for the duke holds episcopal dignity — had not at 
hand his favorite clerk to respond 'Amen/ " This was a sly allusion to 
Mrs. Clarke, the royal bishop-commander-in-chief 's mistress, who had 
trafficked extensively in the sale of commissions in the British army; 
indeed, her profligate dealings had formed the subject of a delicate inves- 
tigation. "The duke," continues Mr. Coppinger, "has declared — an 
incredible statement — that his father's sufferings had originated in the 
agitation of the Catholic question. ... In alluding to his royal father, 
the pious duke had burst into tears. His filial affection was not so 
warm when he required to be paid so prodigious a sum as £10,000 a 
year for visiting his blind hoary father once a month." Coppinger also 
attacked the marquis of Anglesea for his apparent readiness to suppress 
Catholic emancipation with the sword. But for the generous manner in 
which Catholic blood flowed for his defence at "Waterloo, the marquis, 
said Mr. Coppinger, " would not be alive to display his military eloquence 
in the House of Lords." 

Mr. Coppinger was a great enthusiast about Napoleon. He was 
fond of making allusions in his speeches to the imperial eagle ; also to 
the "stars and stripes" of the American republic. The broadness of 
his southern accent somewhat marred the effect of his speeches. He 
was a pale, thin man. In his student-days his circumstances were 
straitened. O'Connell once said, referring to something mysterious, " It 
is as hard to find out as Stephen Coppinger's lodgings." Coppinger had 
occasional differences of opinion with our hero. They squabbled on 
the question of Catholic burial-grounds, Coppinger objecting to some 
points insisted on by O'Connell. The great man at once retaliated in a 
style half humorous, half savage : " Boys," said he, addressing an audi- 
ence in which his pretorian guard of coal-porters was fully represented 
— " boys, did you ever see such an ugly or a more hungry-looking fellow? 
Stingy Stephen refuses to give us the light of his countenance — oh wir- 
rastlirueV Dan afterwards nicknamed Coppinger "the knight of the 
rueful countenance." 

Coppinger used to tell himself that, immediately after the achieve- 
ment of emancipation, O'Connell met him and exclaimed, " Well, Cop- 
pinger, you see I have emancipated you." "Rather," replied Coppinger, 
half in joke and half in earnest, "rather say that, notwithstanding all 



430 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

your efforts to the contrary, we succeeded in obtaining the blessings of 
emancipation." Mr. Coppinger is said to have been full of anecdotes 
of his contemporaries "of an exclusive character." 

At this meeting Lawless proposed a resolution, which was intended 
as a thrust at O'Connell, to the effect that the Catholics of Ireland had 
not authorized their assent to be given to "the wings." He was re- 
ceived, we learn from the Evening Post, with hisses. There were also 
cries of "Off! off!" and " He wants to disunite us." Lawless tried to 
get a hearing. He said, " I am to-day the friend of unanimity, and, far 
from dissenting from Mr. O'Connell, I congratulate him on his return to 
those principles which he formerly advocated, and a departure from 
which was to me a cause of distress and pain." Still he blamed the 
London delegation. He earnestly denounced "the wings." But his 
voice was drowned in mingled disapprobation and applause. Charles 
Teeling seconded the resolution, many others pressing forward to do so. 
The clamor and confusion waxed louder. Finally, Lawless withdrew his 
resolution. 

Atbr several other speakers had been heard, O'Connell rose to ad- 
dress the meeting amidst the most vehement acclamations. He looked 
gay, bold, confident and genial. He was dressed in what was styled 
the uniform of the Association — "a blue frock adorned witli black silk 
buttons, a black velvet collar and a gilt button on the shoulder; the 
vest yellow and the trowsers white. Soon he carried the meeting along 
with him. He was humorous and eloquent as usual. He laughed at 
the prospect of the Kildare Street Society losing the management of 
£22,000 a year. "Oh, how sleek and how slim the saints will look, 
with their eyes turned up and their hands in their empty breeches 
pockets!" His droll mimicry of tin 1 saints set the whole meeting in a 
roar. He called on them "to rally and unite around the standard of 
liberty. I have promised in England that there shall be a new Catholic 
Association." He happily ridiculed Lord Liverpool's promise to Lord 
Lonsdale, possessor of eight rotten boroughs and nineteen seats in the 
House of Commons, with which -'he traffics as cattle are sold in Smith- 
field market," to put down the Catholic question. It was "alive and 
merry," notwithstanding. He artfully passed over "the wings'! without 
any notice, in spite of Lawless's provocations. Cheers arose when he 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 431 ' 

said, " 'Tis true we have been defeated, but we are not dismayed ; we 
have been betrayed, but are unconquered still." He also referred to the 
extraordinary conversion of Mr. Brownlow, the head of the Orange 
party in Ireland, to the Catholic cause, as a hopeful symptom. Speak- 
ing of that gentleman's victory over his own prejudices, our hero said, 
"Mr. Brownlow was too honorable, too honest, not to retract his error 
openly, generously and nobly, when he discovered it." At this meeting 
Shiel proposed a census of the Catholics of Ireland to show their 
strength ; he also suggested aggregate meetings in all the parish 
chapels throughout Ireland, and petitions from all the parishes. O'Con- 
nell's horses were taken from his carriage on this day also. 

The bill which suppressed the Catholic Association prohibited any 
society for the redress of political grievances or the defence of causes in 
courts of justice from holding meetings beyond fourteen days. To evade 
this, it was declared that the Association should not act under the pre- 
tence or for the purpose of procuring redress of grievances in Church 
and State or of carrying on civil or criminal causes. Its professed 
objects were — 1st, the promotion of peace and concord ; 2d, encourage- 
ment of liberal and religious education ; 3d, to ascertain the population, 
and the number of persons belonging to each persuasion ; 4th, to build 
churches and establish Catholic burial-grounds ; 5th, to promote improve- 
ments in science and agriculture in Ireland, and to encourage Irish man- 
ufactures and commerce ; 6th, to support an enlightened press, circulate 
works advocating just principles, and vindicate Catholic principles 
against slanderous attacks; 7th, to prepare full statements and au- 
thentic refutations of the various charges made against Catholics in 
recent hostile petitions to Parliament. Every person paying £1 as an 
admission fee, before a certain day, was to be enrolled as a member. 
After that day, any one desirous to become one, in addition to that pay- 
ment, should be proposed and seconded by a member. The new Asso- 
ciation embraced men of all sects. O'Connell caused Counsellor Bel- 
lew's name to be omitted from the committee of twenty-one prominent 
Catholics appointed to frame this society, boldly casting in his teeth his 
pensions from government for unknown services. Bellew had provoked 
O'Connell by volunteering an opinion that Goulbourn's bill could not 
be evaded. " The undergrovvl of poor Jack Lawless," writes our hero in 



482 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

a letter to the Catholics, " and his few and foolish partisans may be, as it 
has been, a mere source of laughter and ridicule; but My. "William 
Bellew stands in a very different situation. . . . Mr. William Bellew 
deserves none of your confidence. ... He certainly has two, and I 
firmly believe three, pensions. . . . Who paid his fee ? Who called on 
him, a Catholic, to publish an opinion hostile certainly to Catholic 
rights? . . . 

' Hie niger est ; hunc tu Romane caveto.' " 

[He is black-hearted; do yon, Roman, beware of him.) The committee 
of twenty-one sat fifteen days and issued a report, which was adopted 
by the Catholics of Ireland. It suggested the fourteen days' meetings, 
which I shall notice immediately. 

Meanwhile a clique, or party, that had sprung up in Dublin, called 
the Mahon party, from one of its leaders, Nicholas Mahon the merchant, 
continued for some time to censure O'Connell severely for the course he 
had pursued in London respecting "the wings." At a meeting in 
Bridge Street Chapel, in July, 1825, from which this clique (nicknamed 
by our hero "the Bridge street gang") wanted to exclude all persons 
not inhabitants of St, Audeon's parish, O'Connell suddenly appears in 
the gallery while the discussion is going on. John Reynolds — after- 
wards a loud Dublin demagogue, one year lord-mayor of that city, and 
during one Parliament its representative in the House of Commons — 
makes his political debut on this occasion as a backer of O'Connell. A 
vote of thanks, proposed by Mr. Forde and seconded by Mr. McLoughlin, 
gave our hero an opportunity of speaking in vindication of his public 
conduct. He boasts of his opposition to the union and his great sacri- 
fices. He briskly engages Nicholas Mahon and Richard O'Gonnan. 
The latter, he says, he has "detected in a mistake of £20." Here 
Nicholas Mahon interrupts him. Nicholas will not "listen to such 
reflections upon one of the most respectable of the parishioners. I 
ask," says he, "Does Mr. O'Connell come here to abuse and insult us?" 
"I disclaim," says O'Connell, "any such intention. It is proverbial 
that those who serve their country are invariably repaid with ingrati- 
tude and injustice. They always find some calumniators prepared and 
anxious to destroy their fame and injure their honor." Here Richard 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 403 



takes his turn at interruption; he cannot digest the word "calumni- 
ators." The flow of O'Connell's speech is hardly checked for a moment. 
His conduct with regard to the forty-shilling freeholders he almost admits 
to be blameworthy. He tells the meeting that the report of the com- 
mittee of twenty-one is just ready, and that it condemns the introduc- 
tion of the measure of disfranchisement. 

At the aggregate meeting of Catholics which took place in Clarendon 
Street Chapel a few days after this scene, O'Connell skilfully evaded the 
snares of Goulbourn's act in a cautious speech. Shiel, on the other 
hand, uttered a harangue as violent as it was eloquent. Against the 
duke of York especially he hurled such fierce words as the following : 
" He has inherited his father's understanding; may he never inherit his 
throne." The duke's brothers, George the Fourth and William the 
Fourth, never forgot or forgave this bitter invective of Shiel's. It pre- 
vented, in the latter king's reign, the fiery-tongued little orator's ap- 
pointment to the office of solicitor-general, which would necessarily have 
led to his elevation to the bench ; and this in spite of some pathetic 
rhetorical repentance spoken at the time of the duke of York^s death. 

About this period we have the exciting spectacle of a curious and 
somewhat comical war between O'Connell and Cobbett. The latter 
assails our hero virulently about " the wings." He says it is too bad 
that Mr. O'Connell, after having confessed himself a dupe, should be 
suffered "to roam about the country, boasting of his long services and 
great sacrifices, and carrying in appearance all the brains and all the 
virtues of Ireland about in his pocket." Again Cobbett charges him 
with corruption, and then retracts the charge. Also he says, " I impute 
to him inordinate vanity — vanity greater than my pen can paint." 
O'Connell, in reply, says that in a former letter he had styled Cobbett 
" a comical miscreant. I now withdraw the appellation. Cobbett is 
comical only when he means to be serious; when he intends to be jocose 
he is truly doleful ; but, serious or jocose, he is at all times a miscreant. 
In lieu of the name I thus retract, I will of my bounty bestow on him 
another denomination, which, although conferred by me as a matter of 
courtesy, he has most richly earned — I will call him in future ' a vile 
vagabond.' ... He is malignant, he is treacherous, he is false. . . . 
He has outlived his intellect. It cannot be said of him that his ' wine 



434 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

of life is on the lees,' because wine is too generous a liquor to enter into 
the comparison ; but 'his gin of existence is on the dregs,' and that fluid, 
which, while it flowed copiously and clearly, was pungent and intoxi- 
cating almost to madness, is now but a muddy residuum, productive of 
sickness and nausea and incapable of giving one exhilarating sensation." 
He accuses Cobbett of inventing a conversation about the Bridge-street 
meeting. " Do not shuffle, Cobbett." After pointing out some apparent 
contradictions in his adversary's statements, and what he calls " the un- 
blushing effrontery of this my vile vagabond," he says, " He shall be a 
comical miscreant again — so he shall." In spite of the fun on both 
sides, this quarrel between the mettlesome popular chieftain of the Irish 
and the equally combative leader of the English radicals was greatly to 
be regretted. O'Connell used to defend his unsparing, if not unscrupu- 
lous, use of invective oddly enough : " If I did not use the sledge- 
hammer to smash opponents, I never could have succeeded." He is 
stated to have said, in conversation with a friend of one of his biogra- 
phers (Fagan), that it was not always irritation, that it was often calcvr 
lotion, which made him indulge in unmeasured vituperation. At all 
events, it should be ever remembered, in palliation of his excess of irri- 
tability and virulence, that no man was ever more frequently provoked 
by inhuman and unfounded slanders than he was. 

But neither Cobbett's attacks, nor those of his other enemies, in the 
slightest degree impaired our hero's popularity — at least permanently. 
This year, outside his own circuit, he visited Antrim, Newry, Calwav 
and Wexford. Wherever he went he moved along in triumph. His 
entries into various towns and cities resembled those of a conqueror re- 
turning home from some great battle. In Galway the horses were taken 
from his carriage. In Cork his reception was flattering. In Mallow he 
had to implore the people to let the carriage pass on quietly, in consider- 
ation of the delicate health of Mrs. O'Connell. who was with him. Ap- 
proaching Wexford, he was met at "the Pass" by a flotilla of boats on 
the Slaney. lie had to go on hoard a barge manned by lirst-rate rowers, 
dressed in green and gold, and having a green Hag hearing on its folds 
a crowmless harp, in the stern. Joyous crowds lined the river-banks 
and shouted enthusiastically as he was rowed along. Wexford town 
was all alive and astir. Thousands stood on the quay and bridge to 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 435 



welcome him. The same evening he was entertained at a public 
dinner. 

I barely notice an unpleasant affair that occurred at the close of the 
year 1825. O'Connell was reported to have said, when speaking at one 
of the Catholic meetings of the attempts at proselytism of the Hibernian 
Society in Kerry, that Mr. Leyne, a barrister and brother of that Captain 
Leyne who was afterwards made a stipendiary magistrate by our hero's 
influence, had renounced Popery in order to inflict pain on an aged 
father. Mr. Leyne sent a message to O'Connell, who, full of remorse on 
account of D'Esterre's death, had by this time "registered a vow in 
heaven," to use his own singular phrase, against duelling. O'Connell 
could not now be goaded to fight in the face of his scruples of conscience. 
In vain Leyne tried to offer him personal insult, and called him a liar, 
a slanderer and a coward. O'Connell lodged informations, and had 
Leyne bound over in large securities to keep the peace. Maurice O'Con- 
nell, our hero's eldest hope, was willing to answer any claim Leyne 
might have on his father. Leyne, having no quarrel with Maurice, beg- 
ged to decline availing himself of his handsome offer. Then Maurice 
and his brother Morgan waited near the Four Courts to meet and chas- 
tise Leyne for his abuse of their father. They withdrew, however, on 
being recognized by the people. As soon as O'Connell heard of the 
intention of his sons, he lodged informations against them and his son- 
in-law, Mr. Fitzsimon. Mr. Morgan O'Connell was arrested in the 
theatre, Mr. Fitzsimon in our hero's own house ; Mr. Maurice O'Connell 
had left Dublin, but shortly after was taken in Tralee. All three had to 
find bail. 

The enactment prohibiting any society for the redress of grievances 
from holding its meetings beyond fourteen days was intended to cripple 
the power of the Catholic movement. Its actual result was to add im- 
mensely to the strength and influence of the agitation. When, on the 
16th of January, 1826, one of these fourteen-day meetings commenced 
its sittings in the Catholic Rooms, on Burgh quay, Dublin, those who 
were indignant at seeing the Association in its former shape, imitating 
the deliberations of the legislature, were now vexed and mortified to see 
a much more formidable assembly debating upon all the national griev- 
ances. In addition to the members accustomed to meet at the weekly 



436 'f HE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

meetings of the Catholic body, leading men, lay and clerical, flocked up 
to Dublin from all parts of the island and took an active part in the 
discussions. The authority of a national convention was virtually added 
to the Catholic assembly. It was plain that O'Connell had skilfully 
accomplished the remarkable feat of "driving his coach-and-six through 
the act of Parliament." It was a vain imagination on the part of min- 
isters to think of suppressing Ireland's complaints. With violent nervous 
gestures, and shrill voice, and vehement eloquence, Shiel descanted on 
the Catholic's position of inferiority in the land of his fathers. At this 
fourteen-day gathering of Catholic might, O'Connell set himself right 
on the subject of "the wings," by a resolution, that their "petition 
shall embrace the principle of unqualified emancipation to its fullest 
extent," and that they deprecated " any measure tending to restrict the 
elective franchise or interfering with the discipline or independence of 
the Catholic Church." 

This great fourteen-day meeting was followed by formidable provin- 
cial meetings. The Catholics invited their Protestant friends to partici- 
pate in these. All over the country the different ranks of society were 
brought together. Mutual confidence waxed stronger. All were taught 
to stand "shoulder to shoulder for liberty." The eloquence of the more 
educated kindled the wrath of the masses — alike the peasantry and the 
working-men of the towns. The deliberations on these occasions most 
frequently lasted two days. On the third a dinner took place, at which 
Catholics and Protestants sat side by side. The liist of these provincial 
meetings was the Limerick one — a tremendous gathering, presided over 
by Thomas Wyse. Other immense meetings succeeded — at Waterford, 
at Cork and elsewhere. These meetings were looked upon as important 
events in the country, and produced far greater and more durable effects 
in their respective localities than any similar assemblies could do in 
Dulilin. O'Connell missed none of them. He seemed ubiquitous, and 
was now more than ever the soul of the entire Catholic movement It 
was idle even to dream for a moment of putting him down. 

After the Dublin fourteen-days' meeting, O'Connell had a funny 
squabble with the press. He complained that the reports of his 
speeches were inaccurate. The Morning Register "took up the cudgels" 
against him on behalf of the reporters: "We admit thai the reports" 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 437 



(of Ms speeches) " did not in length go much beyond seventy eolamns." 
Thev did not give all he said, for "that would require Mr. Thwaites's 
broad sheet. Any one who measures by a stop-watch will find that 
Mr. O'Connell pours out about two hundred words in one minute." It 
is only seven or eight minutes' trouble to him "to fill a column of small 
print." What are any number of minutes' speaking to him f " In a five 
hours' sitting he will contrive sometimes to be three hours on his legs ; 
and in three hours he will positively pour out twenty-two columns and 
a quarter of oratory!" The Freeman's Journal was still more crusty 
with our somewhat unreasonable orator. 

This year, 1826, was signalized by several remarkable electioneering 
triumphs of the Association. The representation of several counties 
was wrested from great Ascendency families that had hitherto controlled 
the elections of those districts with absolute sway. The machinery of 
the Association, spread like a network over the country, was admirably 
adapted for achieving conquests of this description. The great house 
of Beresford was totally defeated in Waterford. Mr. Villiers Stuart, in 
addressing the electors of that county, called on the Catholics to judge 
for themselves as to their own interests. This course was deemed by 
the insolent partisans of the Beresfords "highly ungentlemanlike "- — "a 
daring encroachment on the rights of private property." That the Catholic 
voters should dream of refusing to vote for the nominees of the Ascend- 
ency magnates amounted to "a palpable insurrection." What were the 
forty-shilling freeholders created for but to vote at the beck of their 
masters, the landocrats? The agents of Mr. Stuart's opponent, Lord 
George Beresford, abused the Association, the priests and the people, 
calling the latter superstitious slaves, and yet expecting them to vote 
for Beresford. But the people, while they manifested their zeal for 
Stuart by kindling bonfires on every height and crowding into towns 
and villages to hear the harangues of his agents, naturally turned aside 
indignantly from his rival. John Claudius Beresford, who had come 
down to assist his kinsmen, to his own infinite mortification and that 
of his friends, passed without a cheer through such a crowd in Portlaw. 
O'Connell came down as counsel for Mr. Stuart, receiving a fee of six 
hundred guineas. He prevented the voters belonging to the duke of 
Devonshire's estates from going on board a steamboat, which had been 



438 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



Bent up the Blackwater to Lismore to convey them to Waterford city. He 
nicknamed the vessel "the tea-kettle," and terrified the country-people, 
especially their female relatives, with an exaggerated picture of the dan- 
gers incident to steamboat voyages. At the hustings, the rage and horror 
of Lord George Beresford and his followers rose to the highest pitch when 
O'Connell himself was proposed as a "fit and proper person to represent 
the county." For the first time since the penal laws were established, 
a Catholic candidate for Parliamentary honors was brought forward. 
This was an ingenious device to enable O'Connell to deliver his opinions 
at huge at the hustings. Saving spoken with unusual ability for two 
hours, he withdrew his claims in favor of Mr. Stuart. The Beresfords 
were deserted by sonic of their most strenuous supporters. They were 
even put to shame by men whom they had bribed, and who now held 
up the purchase-money in open court. Lord George Beresford, feeling 
himself disgracefully beaten, retired from the contest on the tilth day, 
and Villiers Stuart was declared duly elected by an immense majority. 
The Waterford people were delighted at the humiliation of the insolent 
and bigoted house of Beresford. The head of that house, the marquis 
of Waterford. was then in a dying State. He is said to have expended 
£100,000 on this election. He bore the defection of his dependants 

comparatively well, until even Manton, his favorite huntsman, famous 
for wakening the echoes with his horn, deserted him. The old lord sent 
for this attached follower of his youthful days. " Manton,'" said he, 
feebly, "have you too abandoned me?" The faithful old huntsman 
blessed 'his honor." and wished "long life" to him, and then paused, 
with tears in his eyes, both were for a moment silent ; then Lord 
Waterford repeated his question. " I'd go to the world's end to sarve 
your honor,*' replied the huntsman, "hut — but, please your lordship, I 
cannot vote against nay counthry and my religion." This rebuff was too 
much for the haughty old nobleman. In a few days more he caused 
himself to lie carried on board the packet Dunmore, bound for Caermar- 
then, in Wales, and there, far from his lordly domain of Curraghmore, 
in a common inn, he breathed his last. It is painful to he obliged to 
add that, according to statements I have read, he was mean enough, 
before he died, to dismiss Manton, despoiling him of his farm, and tinn- 
ing his wife and children out on the wide world. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 439 

The two great Ascendency aristocrats of the county Lowth — the 
earl of Eoden, head of the family of Jocelyn, and Lord Oriel, head of 
the Fosters — were likewise humbled. The liberal candidate for Lowth, 
Mr. Alexander Dawson, a retired barrister, was at the head of the poll ; 
the second member was Mr. Foster. Mr. Fortescue, Lord Baden's nom- 
inee, was totally defeated. It was somewhat amusing to see how the 
scornful confidence felt by Mr. Foster, at the commencement; of the con- 
test, paled into nervous anxiety when he saw the thousands of stout 
peasantry who, bearing green banners and shouting and leaping exult- 
ingly, as they flung their hats in the air and caught them again, followed 
the friend of the Catholics as he drove into Dundalk in his old gig. 
Foster, during the progress of this Lowth election, would constantly rush 
into the sheriff's booth and cry out, "Soldiers, Mr. High-Sheriff! I call 
upon you to bring out troops to protect me and my supporters. My life 
is in peril; my brother has been just assailed; we shall be massacred, 
if you persevere in excluding troops from the town." Shiel, however, 
who was counsel for Dawson, was able to prevent the sheriff from yield- 
ing to the suggestions of Mr. Foster's unreasonable alarm. In Monaghan 
the success of the people was still more spontaneous and striking. The 
bigoted Colonel Leslie was defeated by Colonel Westenra. Mr. Brie was 
the liberal candidate's counsel. The thanks of the Association were 
voted to O'Connell, Shiel and Brie. After the close of the Waterford 
election, O'Connell hastened to Kilmainham to take part in the county 
Dublin election. If he w r as vexed to find the Dublin electors less de- 
voted and independent than those of Waterford, still the return of White 
and Talbot, the liberal candidates, was finally secured. In short, the 
machinery of the Association, "the rent," and the self-sacrifice of the 
forty-shilling freeholders, applied and directed by the skill and energy 
of O'Connell, had so triumphed during this general election of 1826, 
that it was now plain to the world that, with most Irish constituencies, 
candidates, who refused to pledge themselves to vote for emancipation, 
had little chance of being returned. As for the bigots, they were in 
consternation. It was all a diabolical plot, at the bottom of which were 
the pope and the Jesuits. Sir Harcourt Lees demanded, Would Parlia- 
ment at length give ear to his prognostications, "put down" Popery and 
send the arch-disturber, O'Connell, to the Tower ? 



440 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

At a Catholic meeting, held in Dublin before the close of the elec- 
tions, O'Connell said "he came to read his recantation on the subject of 
the forty-shilling freeholders. . . . They had burst the bonds and fetters 
which had previously held them in slavery." He thanked them for 
their "boundless patriotism." His "delusion" was "gone for ever." 
The error was his; the merit theirs. He moved, "that we deem it our 
duty, publicly and solemnly, to declare that we will not accept of emanci- 
pation accompanied by any infringement whatsoever of the forty-shilling 
franchise." Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, who, on this occasion, wore a 
green coat and an orange cravat, would allow no one to second the 
motion, in favor of "the heroic and magnanimous forty-shilling free-* 
holders," but himself. This was the only subject on which "he had 
ever differed with his friend O'Connell," who, "by the proposition of this 
resolution," had achieved one of his noblest victories. Shiel then elo- 
quently described how these degraded serfs, "driven to the hustings as 
the beasts that perish to the shambles," had suddenly thrown off "their 
debasement " and risen "up to the great Level of full and independent 
citizenship." O'Connell, speaking a second time, praised the nobility 
'.vith which a poor man in Waterford, named Casey, had spurned a bribe 
of seventy sovereigns — riches to him. Of three thousand voters in that 
county, the Beresfords had eight hundred registered votes "on their own 
domains." 

As soon as the elections had terminated, O'Connell took steps to 
protect the gallant "forties" from the inveterate landlord persecution to 
which they were sure to be exposed on account of the election victories, 
mainly won through their devoted patriotism. This was necessary; for 
already had the bigoted Evening Mail begun to sound the ominous note 
of woe to the peasantry. The Order of Liberators was established, con- 
sisting of three grades — "The Liberators," "The Knights Grand Cross," 
"The Knights Companions." Two acts of good service to Ireland enti- 
tled a man to be a Knight Companion, three acts a Knight Grand 
Cross. O'Connell's iirst claim was having served Ireland for twenty- 
seven years; his second, having originated the Association of 1823; his 
third, the establishment of the Catholic rent. He now established, in 
addition to the old rent, a fund for the protection of the freeholders, and 
the increase of their strength, called "the new Catholic rent." Our 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 441 



hero signed his letter to the people of Ireland on this new rent, " Daniel 
O'Connell, of the Order of the Liberators." In this address he proposed 
to " advance loans to all those against whom the vengeance of the land- 
lords shall be directed." In another part he says: "Already the perse- 
cution rages. In Westmeath, the tenants on the estate of that unre- 
lenting enemy of ours, Lord Castlemaine, are distrained for the May 
rent." "The Liberator's" call was responded to. Lord Cloncurry was 
grand-master of the new Order; it was also intended that it should 
have a chancellor and a prelate. 

Pretty much about this time, Mr. Dominick Eonayne of Cork tried 
to induce O'Connell to go in heartily with the English radicals for the 
destruction of the borough influence of the aristocracy. Eonayne de- 
nounced the sinecures, grants, pensions and other monopolies of the 
oligarchic system that prevailed. He demanded, How would emancipa- 
tion "diminish the burden of the overbearing Church Establishment 
or redress the evils arising from absenteeism ? . . . Fling, then, away 
your vain pursuit of an exclusive measure, and join those who will give 
you the real emancipation and the true equality of the law." The blan- 
dishments of Earl Fitzwilliam, who took the chair at a Catholic meeting 
in Waterford, and of other members of the alarmed aristocracy, pre- 
vented O'Connell, who always had a hankering after the great old fam- 
ilies, from giving a favorable hearing to these views of Mr. Eonayne, 
though, some years before, he had himself declared,, at a meeting held 
in Harold's Cross, Dublin, "that the only, remedy for Irish calamities 
was radical reform and universal suffrage." 

About this period great sympathy towards Ireland began to be felt 
in foreign lands. The Irish struggle against England was compared to 
the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. The self-glorifying Eng- 
lish on the Continent were sneered at and reproached for their cruel 
oppression of Ireland. LEtoih, one of the organs of the French gov- 
ernment, took up the cause of Ireland in a series of brilliant articles. 
French tourists in Ireland, on their return to Paris, spread abroad the 
tale of Ireland's wrongs. But friends to the Association were springing 
up not- merely in France, but in Spain, Italy, various German states, 
even British India. Correspondence from all these countries occupied 
a large portion of the time of the Association. The world saw with 



442 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

pleasure O'Connell and his powerful agitation shaking the British em- 
pire. His sagacity and energy were in all foreign lands the theme of 
praise. Translations of his speeches, and those of Shiel, were con- 
stantly published in foreign journals. All this galled the proud heart 
of England, but at the same time taught her the impossibility of delay- 
ing emancipation much longer. 

But of all the foreign nations that about this time showed interest 
in the Catholic struggle, perhaps the most sympathetic was the great 
American republic. Ties of consanguinity accounted for the friendly 
feelings of myriads of American citizens towards Ireland. The love of 
justice and indignation against oppression and wrong caused myriads 
more to become advocates of that outraged land. So early as 182."). at 
a meeting in New York, Judge Swanton in the chair, resolutions and 
addresses, written by Dr. McNevin, the "United Irish" exile, and ex- 
pressive of sympathy with Ireland and indignation against England, 
were voted. An association with a 'rout,'' to co-operate with the Cath- 
olic organization in Ireland and modelled on its plan, was established. 
The State government seems to have countenanced this movement. A 
guarded expression of gratitude was sent out to the American body 
from the Association in Dublin. Opinions on the bold sentiments of 
the American address were carefully avoided. Other meetings were 
subsequently held in the chief cities of the Onion. Other friendly ad- 
dresses to the Irish Catholics were voted. Indeed, associations, with 
numerous offshoots, sprang up all over the States with great rapidity. 
" Rent" was collected everywhere, and correspondence opened up by all 
the American bodies with the model society in Dublin. 

Returning to occurrences in Ireland — in defiance of the increasing 
power of the Catholic body, and in defiance of their petition against ii, 

the Church-rates bill, which enabled Protestants to tax Catholics for 
the building and repair of their churches, was carried this year. The 

Ascendency was not quite prostrated yet, Still, O'Connell's fame and 
might grew daily. When he arrived with his family at Ncnagh, on the 
12th of July, on his way to Darrynane, the people took the horses from 
his carriage and drew him through the town. Quarter sessions were 
going on in Nenagh at the time. But when they heard the huzzas out- 
side, nearly all the people in the court rushed out to see "the Liberator," 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 443 

leaving the assistant-barrister almost "alone in his glory." Towards the 
end of this year O'Connell was saddened by a very painful occurrence. His 
very promising and rising young friend, Counsellor Brie, one evening got 
into an idle altercation with a Mr. Hayes, who had just stepped off the 
Cork mail-coach, about the merits of Mr. Callaghan, one of the candidates 
at the Cork election, who was Mr. Hayes's relation. This gentleman had 
overheard Mr. Brie call Callaghan "a rascal." Hot words ensued. Cards 
were exchanged. They met, next morning, in a field near Glasnevin. 
Mr. Brie fell at the first tire, mortally wounded. "God forgive me!" 
cried Mr. Hayes, flinging down the fatal weapon and rushing distractedly 
from the field. "My God!" says Brie faintly, "I believe I am shot." 
In eight minutes he was a corpse. The death of this talented and be- 
nevolent young man occasioned widespread grief in Dublin city. An 
immense crowd of all religions followed his remains to the grave. He 
was one of those clever barristers whom the Association was wont to 
send down to the country, especially the North, to protect the Cath- 
olics against the shameless partiality and misconduct of Ascendency 
magistrates. If a reporter accompanied the barrister sent on such a 
mission, the magistrate would be inspired with a still more salutary fear 
of public opinion. In one of his speeches to the Association, in 1821, 
we find O'Connell announcing that, "at the least possible fee that could 
be given to professional gentlemen," Counsellor Brie and Mr. Corcoran, 
the attorney, would attend an inquiry at New Ross, in the county Wex- 
ford, to assist the people in bringing their wrongs "fairly before the 
magistrate." 

On the 5th of January, 1827, that royal opponent of the Catholic 
claims, the duke of York, expired, after a long and painful illness. 
Though a very imperfect character, still this prince was a more generous 
and, indeed, in almost every way a better man, than the king, his brother, 
which, after all, is not saying much for him. Shiel and O'Connell had 
incurred a good deal of odium by the fierce invectives which they had 
uttered against him after his " so-help-me-God " harangue. O'Connell 
had openly declared, " It is a mockery to tell me that the people of Ire- 
land have not an interest in his ceasing to live ;" and speaking of the 
contingency of his death, he had added, amidst laughter and cheers, 
"I am perfectly resigned to the will of God, and shall abide the result 



4i4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. 

with the most Christian resignation." Now, however, when the duke 
had actually ceased to exist, both Shiel and O'Connell expressed a gen- 
erous sorrow for his death and a keen regret for the bitter words they 
had spoken in anger. "The Catholics of Ireland," said O'Connell, 
"exult not at the death of the duke of York. We war not with the 
dying or the grave. Our enmities are buried there. They expired with 
the individual who caused them. We feel nothing but regret at seeing 
a fellow-creature called from this earthly scene to render the great account 
to his Maker. Whatever his royal highness may have said against us, 
we forgive. No man ever acted with more impartiality at the head of 
an army. He never made a distinction between a Catholic and a Prot- 
estant." O'Connell then tells an interesting anecdote of the duke's 
generous treatment of a Catholic officer of his acquaintance, who had 
served in the Irish Brigade of France, and in the armies of Germany 
and Holland. This gentleman had applied for a commission in the 
British army. A letter came to him, asking "What his religion was?" 
He replied, that, having never been asked that question before, "he 
scarcely recollected his religion; but that now, as it was put to him, he 
was a Catholic." lie expected to hear no more from the duke, "but by 
return of post he received a commission with lull pay in the British 
service." Moore, also, in immortal verse, lamented the duke's death, 
while referring bitterly to his hostility to emancipation. This year, too, 
the dull prime minister, the earl of Liverpool, another bitter opponenl 
of the Catholic claims, was incapacitated by an apoplectic seizure from 
taking any further part in public affairs. lie did not survive this attack 
many months. This timorous and narrow bigot's removal from the helm 
of government was a source of rejoicing to the Catholics of Ireland. 

I shall slightly notice an odd outrage which, one day in January, 
L827, our hero met with at the hands of the notorious Remigius, Or 
Remus, or Remmy Sheehan, one of the proprietors of the Dublin Evening 
Mm'/. O'Connell had given this worthy more than once "a taste of the 
quality" of the rough side of his tongue — he had called him "an apos- 
tate." "Wrathful at such arraignment foul," the vengeful Remmy met 
Dan in Nassau street, near Morrison's Hotel, valorously struck him 
across the aim with an umbrella, and then, consulting "the better part 
of valor," ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. A police-office 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 445 

scene ensued. Dan required that Sheehan should be bound over to keep 
the peace, for the protection of himself and family. " I even wish it for 
the protection of Mr. Sheehan himself." 

" I want none of your protection," roared Sheehan, with redoubled 
rage; "I am able to protect myself." When O'Connell spoke of his 
resolution never to fight another duel, Remmy cried out, perhaps not 
altogether unreasonably, "Bah! bah! If a man makes such a resolu- 
tion, he should at the same time make another, not to wound the feel- 
ings of any man." The magistrate had to curb more than once Rem- 
my's tendency to discursiveness. Remmy professed a lofty scorn of the 
idea of "reconciliation" with Dan. Our hero had slandered his brother 
and himself. His brother was "no renegade; he never was a Roman 
Catholic." Remmy himself, "for the last twenty years, had been a 
staunch Protestant," and wouldn't have anything to do with a paper 
"unless it was conducted as a pure Protestant paper." With regard to 
the assault, he added: "Well, then, I did assault him, and I did it ad- 
visedly, and with all my heart and soul ; and if the same provocation 
were given, I should do so again." O'Connell was bound under a pen- 
alty of £20 to prosecute Remmy before the recorder. Remmy was con- 
demned to "durance vile" for three months. O'Connell magnificently 
memorials government to release his prostrate foe. Remmy heroically 
petitions "the powers that be" not to let him out, especially if O'Con- 
nell were to have any hand in his release. Enough of this grotesque 
passage of our hero's strangely diversified biography. 

I pass by another fourteen-days' meeting held in Dublin in the same 
month, during which our hero displayed his usual untiring energy. On 
the 6th of March Sir Francis Burdett's resolution, "That this House" 
(of Commons) "is impressed with the expediency of taking into consid- 
eration the laws imposing disabilities" on His Majesty's Roman Cath- 
olic subjects, "with a view to their relief," was lost by a majority of four. 
O'Connell deemed this a most serious defeat. Troops were poured into 
Ireland; five million rounds of ball-cartridges distributed through the 
garrisons. On the 12th of March a Catholic meeting was held in the 
Corn Exchange. Sir Thomas Esmonde, the chairman, supported by 
Nicholas Mahon, wanted to cushion a bold letter of O'ConnelFs calling 
on the people to address the king, to renew their petitions for emanci- 



446 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

pation, and also to petition for the repeal of the union. Jack Lawless, 
however, succeeded, after considerable altercation, in forcing the chart - 
man to have O'Connell's letter read to the meeting by Mr. Dwyer. 

The Catholics soon rallied from their state of depression. Their hopes 
even rose higher and brighter than ever. The impassioned, the eloquent, 
the brilliant George Canning, of Irish parentage both by father and 
mother, had been entrusted by the king with the task of forming a min- 
istry. As he was known to have become a warm friend to emancipation, 
Wellington, Peel, Eldon and other Tory members of the Liverpool cabinet 
refused to take office under him. Some of the aristocrats were galled to 
see a man without great family connections at the head of affairs. Peel, 
while he was prepared to veer round to the cause of emancipation, was 
determined, if possible, to have the credit of carrying the measure him- 
self. Tims the new premier had jealousies and rancorous opposition 
both from some of his old associates and from a section of his old polit- 
ical opponents — in short, heart-breaking difficulties to encounter 1,'om 
the outset of his administration. However, he succeeded in forming a 
cabinet which was, upon the whole, favorable to emancipation. A huge 
portion of the Whig party gave him their support. The marquis of 
Anglesea, a gallant cavalry general, succeeded the Marquis Wellesley as 
viceroy of Ireland. His chief secretary was Lord Francis Leveson 
Grower, afterwards nicknamed the ••shave-beggar" by our hero. 

The masses of the Irish people, who had been well trained by O'Conneil 
and the Association to understand the Catholic question and its pros- 
pects, were now naturally in a state of the highest exultation. A greal 
aggregate meeting of the Catholics was held in Clarendon Street Chapel, 
at which the beautiful Mrs. Wise, Lucien Bonaparte's daughter and the 
great Napoleon's niece, was one of the ladies present. O'Conneil, N. 
P. O'Gorman and other orators expressed their satisfaction at the prom- 
ising aspect of affairs. It was on this occasion that Shiel's voice, ring- 
ing shrilly and triumphantly, exclaimed: "Peel is nut: Bathursl is out; 
Westmoreland is out; Wellington, the bad Irishman, is out; and, thanks 
be to God! the hoary champion of every abuse, the venerable supporter 
of corruption in all its forms, the pious antagonist of every generous 
sentiment, Eldon, procrastinating, canting, griping, whining, weeping, 
ejaculating, protesting, money-getting and money-keeping Eldon, is out 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 447 

. . . We have got rid of the jailer" (Earl Bathurst) "who presided over 
the captivity of Napoleon, and who was so well qualified to design what 
Sir Hudson Lowe was so eminently calculated to execute. . . . And better 
than all — better than the presumption of Wellington, the narrow-heart- 
edness of Bathurst, the arrogance of Westmoreland, the ostentatious 
manliness and elaborate honesty of Mr. Peel — we have got rid of Lord 
Bldon's tears !" 

Everything seemed to promise well. As the 12th of July approached, 
Lord Anglesea forbade by proclamation the customary Orange procession 
in Dublin and the dressing of King William's statue in College Green. 
In Ulster, indeed, the Orangemen insolently paraded with purple and 
orange sashes, fired shots over the houses of Catholics and played " The 
Protestant Boys" and "Croppies, Lie Down." O'Connell lauded Can- 
ning and called on the Kilkenny people to return to Parliament Mr. 
Dogherty (afterwards chief-justice of the Common Pleas), who was repre- 
sented to be a friend of the prime-minister's. O'Connell did not then 
foresee his subsequent altercations with Dogherty. But all these bright 
expectations that Canning, as he had vaunted "of having given freedom 
to the Catholics of South America," when, to use his own eloquent words, 
"he called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old," would 
now enfranchise the Catholics of Ireland and Great Britain, were destined 
to be rudely dashed to the earth by the premature and melancholy death 
of that great and generous statesman. 

From the commencement of his administration he was baited and 
circumvented by an unholy combination of jealous rivals. The aristo- 
cratic section of the Whigs, headed by Earl Gray, who is said not to 
have forgotten or forgiven some satirical sallies of Canning's wicked wit, 
that had caused him to smart years before, combined against the new 
minister with the more inveterate portion of the Tory party. That 
Pecksniffian statesman, Peel, however, had the chief share in the venom- 
ous work of "hounding him to death." This is the phrase of Lord George 
Bentinck, who, years later, avenged him by helping to overthrow Peel's 
power. Meanwhile, Sir Robert assailed the great orator for going over 
to the Catholic side, while he was even then fully resolved to do the 
same thing himself, whenever an opportunity to advance his views of 
ambition by such a change of tactics should arise. This was a favorite 



448 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

policy with Sir Eobert Peel through life — to oppose certain measures 
vehemently, when out of office, and then, having once attained power, 
to bring forward the same measures, thereby obliging his adversaries to 
swell his majorities with their votes. The duke of Wellington's oppo- 
sition to Canning, if fully vindictive as Peel's, was at least more honest. 
Between them all, though he continued to the last to face the hatred 
that surrounded and raged against him, night after night, with the un- 
shrinking courage and defiance of a lion at bay, Canning's sensitive 
heart was broken. He died in August, 1827. "They have killed him," 
said the duke of Clarence, afterwards King William the Fourth; "I 
knew they would kill him." His death occasioned deep sorrow in Ire- 
land. O'Connell pronounced an eloquent panegyric on the deceased 
statesman. Referring to the helping hand which he had extended to 
Greece and South America struggling for freedom, he said : " There is in 
struggling Greece many a gallant spirit that will long to demonstrate 
the sincerity of his grief for Canning's departure by sacrificing at his 
tomb whole hecatombs of the enemies of Christianity. In South " 
(Spanish?) ''America, too — in Mexico, in Peru, in Chili and in La Plata, 
and, more than all, in Colombia — will his death be followed by mourn- 
ing. The great, the immortal Bolivar will shed tears of bitter anguish; 
the sounds of sorrow will ascend to the summits of the Andes; and 
throughout all the nations of the earth the name of Canning will be 
consecrated in the grief of every worthy breast." 

I shall briefly notice the religious controversy that this year kept 
Dublin in a state of ferment for several days. In the Rotundo, Mr. 
Pope, a practiced controversialist, and the famous Father Tom Maguire, 
a Leitrim parish-priest, who now for the first time became known as an 
able logician, a powerful wielder of syllogistic sledge-hammers, met in 
wordy strife — the former as champion of the creed of the Protestants, 
the latter in defence of that of the Roman Catholics. The reverend 
disputants wrangled together with commendable courtesy. Though 
many were entertained with the ingenious oratory of the learned theo- 
logians, nobody on either side was converted or profited in the least by 
it. Both parties claimed the victory. On the first day of the debate 
O'Connell took the chair. Other inflammatory discussions, like this one, 
took place in Ireland about the same time. This whole movement seems 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 449 

to have been a spasmodic attempt on the part of the Ascendency 
bigots to revive the "new reformation" business, in order to stem the 
tide which was running fast in favor of "a compromise with Jezebel,' - 
or "Popery." However, Dr. Doyle and other Catholic prelates very 
properly discountenanced such unedifying encounters. As for Fathei 
Tom, a certain Miss Anne McGaraghan shortly after accused him of 
seducing her. An action was taken by her father, a farmer and publican, 
in the Dublin courts of law. The jury brought in a verdict for Fathei 
Tom. The whole affair wore the ugly appearance of a conspiracy got 
up to ruin his moral reputation. O'Connell was Father Tom's leading 
counsel, and the speech delivered by him on this occasion was one of his 
ablest forensic efforts. 

The year 1828 opened with a novel and extraordinary display of 
Catholic might. In accordance with a suggestion of Shiel's, on the 
same day, the 13th of January, and the same hour, the whole Catholic 
people of Ireland met in their several parishes all through the island. 
When the session of Parliament opened the Association had a petition 
ready, signed by eight hundred thousand Catholics, praying not for their 
own relief, but for repeal of the Test Act and the Corporation Act, which 
had excluded Protestant Dissenters from office for a century and a half. 
This petition, which had been suggested by O'Connell, was written by 
Father L' Estrange. "This," says Mr. Mitchel, "was an incident well 
calculated to produce a fine dramatic effect — the proscribed and op- 
pressed Catholics petitioning for the rights of the much less proscribed 
and oppressed nonconformists." On the other hand, there were many 
petitions from Protestants in favor of Catholics; though, unhappily, too, 
numbers of influential Protestant petitions — from the British universi- 
ties, for example, from various corporations of towns and cities, espe- 
cially that of Dublin — deprecated all concessions to Catholics. 

Anglesea remained viceroy under the feeble and short-lived ministry 
of Lord Goderich, and also when the duke of Wellington became prime 
minister, on the 22d of January, 1828. Contrary to the hopes of the 
bigots, Anglesea became a favorite with the good-natured, credulous 
Irish people. He played the role of a conciliatory viceroy. In spite of 
his perverse politics at a later period, he seems to have been a well- 
intentioned man, frank and manly. O'Connell afterwards said of him ■ 



450 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONXELL. 

' Poor Anglesea ! the unfortunate man was not wicked, but misguided." 
It appears that Anglesea said to 0' Gorman precisely the same thing of 
Dan : " That unfortunate O'Connell means well, but he is misguided.'* 
Anglesea foolishly said that O'Connell had no influence in Ireland. 
Peel was home secretary, Goulbourne chancellor of the exchequer. 
That time-server, Palmerston, had a seat in the cabinet. It also 
contained, to use O'Connell's ludicrous nicknames, "Booby Bexley, 
Doodle Dudley, Squeaky Wynne and Mawworm Grant." Wellington's 
elevation to power, so far from daunting them, inspired O'Connell and 
the Catholics with an unprecedented spirit of unanimity and energy. 
In February, they resolved, at an aggregate meeting in Dublin, "That 
we will consider any member an enemy to the peace of Ireland who 
shall support any administration not making emancipation a cabinet 
measure." This year O'Connell also established Catholic churchwardens, 
to forward to the Association reports about "the rent," the census, amount 
of tithes and church-cess, kildare Place schools and proselytisni. 

Continental governments began to watch the progress of affairs in 
Ireland. The due de Montebello, the marquis de Dalmatic, M. Duver- 
gier, and other French travellers visited the island; their reports of 
what they saw made a deep impression on the mind of France. Sym- 
pathy for Ireland prevailed on the Continent. This year a great meet- 
ing at Cloninel lasted three days. Fifty thousand peasants, wearing 
green cockades and green uniforms made of calico, gave the assembly 
the appearance of a patriotic host. The military spirit of the nation 
was kindling fast. This year, too, a measure for Catholic relief passed 
the Commons by a majority of six; but it was defeated by a majority 
of forty-four in the Lords. However, Lord John Russell's bill for the 
repeal of the Test and Corporation acts became law. Peel gave it only 
a faint opposition. This was a sign of the times. The day of Catholic 
emancipation was coining fast. After struggling for twenty-eight years, 
O'Connell at length had victory in his grasp ! * 

* Authorities: Mitchel's "History;" "Life of O'Connell," published by Mullany; Daunt'a 
"Recollections;" McNeviu's" Life and Speeches of Shiel ;" Shiel's "Sketches;" Kennedy's "Remi- 
niscences;" Wise's "Association;" Fagan; "Irish Quarterly Review;" "Annual Register;" Twiss'fl 
" Life of Eldon ;" Prince Puckler Muskau's "Travels in Ireland;" "O'Counell's Speeches," edited 
b-» b*» son ; Fitzpatrick's " Life of Dr. Doyle ;" Alison's " Europe ;" >itc 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Preparations for the Clare election — O'Connell offers himself to the electors as 
a candidate for parliamentary honors — sets out for clare ; his triumphal 
progress — Exciting canvass in Clare — Steel, O'Gorman Mahon, Shiel, Father 
Murphy, Father Tom Maguire, Jack Lawless all canvassing for O'Connell — 
Indignation of the landlords — The election — Sheriff Malony and O'Gorman 
Mahon — Sir Edward O'Brien's tears — Speeches of the two candidates, Vesey 
Fitzgerald and O'Connell — Exciting scenes — The humors of an Irish election 
forty-three years ago — "The first man in the county" — A bill of indictment 
against a priest's physiognomy — Colonel Vandeleur deserted by his voters — "The 
wolf is on the walk" — Devotion of the peasantry — Defeat of the cabinet min- 
ister AND THE ARISTOCRACY — GENEROUS FEELING OF O'CONNELL ; MAGNANIMITY OF VESEY 

Fitzgerald — "The man of the people" the member for Clare — He is chaired in 
Ennis; his triumphal progress to Dwblin — Lawless at Ballibay — Revolutionary 
measures proposed in the association — aristocratic meeting at the rotunda in 
favor of emancipation — " derry dawson's " speech — "brunswick clubs " — the 

VICEROY, ANGLESEA, FAVORABLE TO EMANCIPATION — He IS RECALLED; VAST CROWDS 
ATTEND HIM TO KlNGSTOWN — THE IRISH SOLDIERY IN FAVOR OF O'CONNELL — EMANCIPA- 
TION BROUGHT FORWARD IN PARLIAMENT BY WELLINGTON AND PeEL — THE ASSOCIATION 

is dissolved — Bigoted opposition to the relief measure — The kiit" 'TBuggles 

AGAINST IT — It PASSES BOTH HOUSES — GEORGE THE FOURTH RELUCTANTLY aiGNS THE 

bill — Its provisions — Disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders — O'Con- 
nell AT THE BAR OF THE COMMONS ; HE IS MEANLY REFUSED HIS SEAT — HlS ENTHUSI- 
ASTIC RECEPTION IN IRELAND — IRISH GRATITUDE — ODD SQUABBLES — O'CONNELL IS RE- 
ELECTED for" clare — Reflections on the great Catholic victory. 

HE proximate cause of Catholic emancipation was the cele- 
brated Clare election. That extraordinary event came to pass- 
in this way. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, having been advanced to a 
seat in the "Wellington cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, 
was obliged to vacate his seat in Parliament for the county Clare 
As he had always been favorable to emancipation ; as he possessed great 
influence in Clare with all classes from his personal merits, his liberal 
distribution of government patronage and his family connections ; as his 
father, Priine-Sergeant Fitzgerald, had gained the love of the people by 
voting against the union at the sacrifice of his office, there seemed to be 
no doubt that Vesey Fitzgerald would be immediately re-elected. Lord 
John Russell, pleading that the duke of Wellington had acted so nobh 




452 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

in the case of the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts as to entitle 
him to the gratitude of "the liberals," begged O'Connell by letter to 
procure the reversal of the resolution, passed by the Association, that 
they should strive to prevent the return of every candidate not pledged 
to oppose the duke's administration. O'Connell was at first weakly 
inclined to comply with this request, in the interest of the Whigs, but 
his proposal to suspend the resolution met with a stormy opposition, 
which showed the strong dislike felt by Irish Catholics towards Wel- 
lington and Peel. The resolution remained in force; and soon O'Connell 
had good reason to rejoice that his compliance was of no avail. 

When the Association came to the determination of contesting Clare, 
they first thought of putting forward as their candidate the popular 
Major McNamara. As, however, several days passed over without 
wringing any response to their call from the major, they began to doubt 
:hat he would come forward. Doubts, also, were entertained as to the 
zeal of the Clare priests, especially of the influential Dean O'Shaugh- 
nessy of Ennis, who was a distant relative of Mr. Fitzgerald. Nor, 
when the dean, glancing around with "his bright authoritative eye," 
unexpectedly entered the room where the Association sat in council, was 
there much in his ambiguous discourse to restore confidence. Still, the 
members present, far from being downcast, decided that £5000 of the 
Catholic rent should be appropriated to the expenses of the election, 
with a view to smooth any difficulties that pecuniary considerations 
might place in the way of the major's acceptance of the offered candi- 
dature. At the same time Mr. O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele, two 
Clare gentlemen of considerable property, who, on the appearance of 
signs of panic, had insisted that the people of Clare might be roused 
and that the priests were not lukewarm, were sent post to Clare to learn 
the real feelings of the people and to see the major. In two days O'Gor- 
jaan came back with the major's refusal; his family were under such obli- 
gations to Mr. Fitzgerald that he could not honorably oppose him. All 
seemed lost. Not merely the Ascendency party, but the liberal Prot- 
estants, were already hard at work for Fitzgerald. The former, indeed, 
vaunted that no Clare gentleman would stoop so low as to accept the pa- 
tronage of the Association. Pride, however, was doomed to get a speedy fall 

Just when every one was settling down into the belief that further 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 453 

opposition to the cabinet minister was hopeless, universal Ireland — not 
to say the whole British empire — was electrified by the appearance, in 
the Dublin Evening Post, of an address to the electors of Clare, solicit- 
ing their votes, from O'Connell himself. How did this come about ? / 
Tory friend of our hero, Sir David Roose, meeting "Vincent Fitzpatrh X 
(the son of Hugh the publisher) in Nassau street, said to him, " O'Con- 
nell ought to offer himself as a candidate for Clare." Fitzpatrick Avas 
staggered at the remark, but in a moment he exclaimed, "You are 
right." He at once called to mind that John Keogh of Mount Jerome 
had observed to him. when a boy, that the English would never concede 
emancipation until a Catholic was returned to Parliament; that the 
English middle classes, in spite of their stupid prejudices against the 
Irish Catholics, would look on the exclusion from his seat of a member 
duly elected as an outrageous violation of the constitutional privileges 
of the subject. Fitzpatrick flew to O'Connell. Our hero heard him 
coldly at first, but finally adopted his suggestion with warmth. He 
went with him to the office of the Post without delay. A coolness had 
arisen between our hero and Conway, the successor of Magee. O'Con- 
nell, advancing with his "smile of witchery" and proffered hand, said 
to Conway, "Let us be friends." The coolness vanished in a moment. 
Our hero, in the public office (noise was no disturbance to him, so he 
refused to go into the quiet inner room), dashed off his address. "Mod- 
ify it as you please," said he ; but Conway could see nothing in it that 
required change. It was printed at once. While stating his claims to 
their suffrages, in this document he declares that he will never take the 
oath that the mass is idolatrous, "for the authority which created those 
oaths can abrogate them ; and I entertain a confident hope that, if you 
elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the necessity of remov- 
ing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would 
prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country." In 
truth, he had at last found out the true way to wrest emancipation from 
the enemy's grasp. 

As our hero was at this time pressed by pecuniary embarrassments 
(he always lived extravagantly), he sent Vincent Fitzpatrick to see if the 
wealthy Catholics woidd supply funds for the contest. Andrew Ennis, 
Cornelius McLoughlin and John Power put their own names down for 



454 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

£100 each and solicited others to subscribe. In one day the} 7 obtained 
£1600. Within a week the country contributed £14,000. In addition 
to this sum, Cork alone subscribed £1000, of which Jeremiah Murphy 
gave £300. In truth, the excitement was at the highest throughout 
the island. James Power, afterwards member for "Waterford, said to 
Fitzpatrick, "I never was so excited in my life as on reading that 
address." He promised that himself and his father would subscribe tt 
the election fund. 

Before O'Connell set out for Clare, several gentlemen were sent from 
the Association to excite the minds of the people and to prepare the 
way for his coming. The priests, too, were to be stirred up to use 
their influence with the tenantry. The aristocracy — the O'Briens, 
McNamaras, Fitzgeralds, Vandeleurs and others — never dreamt that 
their "serf-freeholders would dare to vote contrary to their mandates. 
It was then a principle amongst the Irish gentry that, if any gentleman 
canvassed the tenants of another with a view to induce them to vote 
contrary to the will of their landlord, such interference was to be looked 
on as a personal insult. Hence the magnates were no doubt startled 
and furious, when Mr. Thomas Steele amiably declared his perfect read- 
iness to fight any landlord who should think himself aggrieved by inter- 
ference with his tenants, and then, assisted by his friend, Mr. O'Gorman 
Mahon, commenced operations by setting to work and canvassing the 
county. These two gentlemen were probably the most active of all the 
emissaries of the Association. They traversed Clare incessantly, vehe- 
mently appealing to the people on the hill-side, in the market-places, at 
the altars after mass. The people, excitable and imaginative, were soon 
roused to such a pitch of patriotic and religious enthusiasm that they 
were even prepared to brave the power and vengeance of their landlords 
in vindicating what they deemed the cause of their country. The gentry 
were almost stupefied with amazement. 

Tom Steele was, no doubt, almost as much in his element during this 
Clare election as he had been when, during Riego's revolution, like a 
generous knight-errant as he was, he combated for Spanish constitutional 
liberty against the invading host of the French Bourbons. In addition 
to his vehement, but grotesque and exaggerated, declamations and the 
harangues of the somewhat fantastic and self-confident, but gallant 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 455 



dashing and handsome O'Gorman Mahon, oratorical stimulants were 
now administered profusely to the peasantry by other noted characters. 
Jack Lawless, with his shaggy brow, aquiline nose, fiercely-glaring eye, 
erect attitude, deep voice, fluent diction and honesty of purpose, together 
with the famous Father Tom Maguire, with his shrewd homely face, his 
plain, vigorous, trenchant rhetoric and dexterously-used syllogisms, took 
an active part in the campaign. The latter gave a somewhat religious 
character to the contest. His chief exploit was the overthrow of Mr. 
Augustine Butler, an extensive landed proprietor in Clare and the lineal 
descendant of the celebrated Catholic lawyer, Sir Toby Butler, of whom 
some notice is taken in the chapter on the penal laws. Mr. Butler 
boldly encountered Father Tom in the chapel where his freeholders were 
assembled. But " Father Tom," says Shiel, " appealed to the memory 
of his celebrated Catholic ancestor, of whom Mr. Butler is justly proud. 
. . . What Sir Toby Butler had been, Mr. O'Connell was; and he ad- 
jured him " not to oppose one "whom he was bound to sustain by a sort 
of hereditary obligation." Father Tom triumphed, and secured one 
hundred and fifty votes for O'Connell. Counsellor Dominick Eonayne's 
mastery of the Irish language helped to achieve this signal success. 
"Throwing an educated mind into the powerful idiom of the country," 
Mr. Ronayne deeply stirred the passions of the people. 

Shiel, who was employed as O'Connell's counsel before the assessor, 
having arrived in Clare the day before the election, proceeded at once to 
the mountain village of Corofin. In the parish of that name Sir Edward 
O'Brien (Smith O'Brien's father), the most opulent resident landlord of 
the county, had three hundred voters. Sir Edward resolved to antici- 
pate the agitator, and set out in his splendid equipage, drawn by four 
horses, for the mountains. On his way he met his tenantry, who had 
descended from their rocky homes, marching along "in large bands, 
waving green boughs and preceded by fifes and pipers." For the first 
time, probably, in all his life, the popular landlord was passed by his 
heretofore devoted tenantry in sullen and ominous silence. But when 
they met the brilliant orator of the Association, their enthusiasm knew 
no bounds. Sir Edward's resolution gave way at sight of this mortify- 
ing contrast. Instead of going to the Catholic chapel, he went to f.hc 
church of the Establishment, leaving his carriage just opposite the 



456 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

ihapel door, a circumstance which reminded the people of the Protest- 
antism of this Milesian magnate. As Shiel approached with the mul- 
titude, the tall, slender, emaciated form of the parish priest, Father 
Murphy, his face pale and sunken, but "illuminated with eyes blazing 
with all the fire of genius and the enthusiasm of religion," his eyebrows 
black, his long, lank hair of the same hue, appeared at the door of the 
rude chapel. Mr. Shiel says that an artist would have found in bin 
rather a study for the fervid Macbriar, the Covenanting preacher in 
"Old Mortality," than "a realization of the familiar notions of a clergy- 
man of the Church of Rome." The brilliant sun rendered more con- 
spicuous this strange figure, with which the wild, desolate, craggy, ver- 
dureless scenery around was in harmony. With "voice of subterraneous 
thunder," the priest imposed silence on the people. Having welcomed 
Shiel to the good work, he proceeded to the wooden altar, rude and 
clumsy as the chapel itself, where he recited mass to the "deeply atten- 
tive people," most of whom "had prayer-books in their hands," with 
"just emphasis," and with "fervency, simplicity and unaffected piety," 
going through all the forms with " propriety and grace." After mass, 
combining the politician with the priest, Father Murphy spoke to his 
flock in Irish. " His actions and attitudes" were worthy of " an accom- 
plished actor," his intonations, now soft, now denunciatory, varied with 
the varying passions of his discourse. Generally he was " impassioned 
and solemn," but at times "the finest spirit of sarcasm gleamed over 
his features, and shouts of laughter attended his description of a miser- 
able, recreant Catholic," who should sacrifice his country to his landlord. 
Towards the close of his harangue, inflamed by his emotions, his eyes 
blazing, thick drops falling down his face, raising himself to his full 
height, "he laid one hand on the altar and shook the other in the spirit 
of almost prophetic admonition." His appeal to the people, "to vote 
for O'Connell in the name of their country and of their religion," was 
irresistible. That hour it was easy to foresee that Father Murphy would 
march into Funis at the head of Sir Edward's tenantry, "and poll them 
to a man in favor of Daniel O'Connell." 

With the exception of Dean O'Shaughnessy, Fitzgerald's kinsman, 
and Father Coffey, whose congregation deserted him, tin' priests were all 
on the side of O'Conneil. The day our hero made his entry into Funis, 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 457 

you might meet a priest in every street who would pledge himself that 
the battle should be won. Thirty thousand people, crowded into the 
streets of Ennis, welcomed "the man of the people" with incessant 
acclamations. Banners hung from every window. "Women," says 
Shiel, "of great beauty were everywhere seen waving handkerchiefs, 
with the figure of the patriot stamped upon them. Processions of free- 
holders, with their parish priests at their head, marched like troops to 
different quarters of the city." No one was intoxicated ; vintners re- 
fused money offered for drink ; order prevailed ; the occupation of the 
police was gone. Such organization was the sure herald of victory. 

Similar enthusiasm had welcomed O'Connell in JNTenagh, Limerick, 
and the other towns through which he had passed on his way to Clare. 
On the day of his departure from Dublin, too, when he left the Court of 
Exchequer to get into his carriage, which waited for him in the east yard 
of the Four Courts, the news having got abroad that he was about to 
start for Clare, barristers in wigs and gowns, flocking from all the courts, 
surrounded him in the hall. A multitude filled the yard likewise. He, 
N. P. 0' Gorman and two other gentlemen, who accompanied him, could 
hardly get through the crowd to the carriage. At last, however, they 
drove off, our hero uncovering his head and bowing in acknowledgment 
of the enthusiastic cheers and blessings, warm from the heart, that 
followed him on his way. 

While O'Connell's supporters were thus eager in his cause, some of 
Fitzgerald's friends backed up their candidate with a zeal worthy of a 
better cause. To aid in defraying his election expenses, £4000 were 
subscribed by five of the aristocracy. One of Fitzgerald's partisans, 
named Hickman, who had been an old acquaintance of our hero's, said 
to him angrily one day, in the streets of Ennis, "Hallo! O'Connell, 
mark my words; if you canvass one of my tenants, I'll shoot you." 
O'Connell, smiling, replied, "I'll canvass every one of them." And it 
appears he really did so. 

The scene in the Ennis court-house, at the opening of this memorable 
election, was novel and striking. On the left side of Mr. Malony, the 
high-sheriff, stood the cabinet minister surrounded by the aristocracy of 
Clare. An expression of wounded pride, bitterness and rage was stamped 
on the faces of these lords of the soil. The small Protestant proprietors, 



458 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 



indeed, swelling themselves into gentry upon the credit of voting for the 
minister, affected to look big. On the right of the sheriff stood O'Con- 
nell, with scarcely a gentleman by his side. Most even of the Catholic 
proprietors opposed him. His strength was in the devoted peasantry 
who, with a sprinkling of priests, filled the body of the hall. A whim- 
sical incident occurred before the proceedings commenced. The sheriff, 
a solemn, dingy-faced, prim-looking individual, who had spent most of his 
life at Canton, in the service of the East India Company, and had appar- 
ently acquired his chief notions of magisterial demeanor and authority 
from the contemplation of mandarins, — this strange functionary, look- 
ing up at the gallery, saw a fantastically attired gentleman perched in 
a singular and even perilous position. " Instead of sitting on one of the 
seats in the gallery, he had leaped over it, and, suspending himself above 
the crowd" on a ledge, astonished the whole assembly. If his position 
was outlandish, his costume was unique. A coat of Irish tabinet, trow- 
sers of the same material, no vest, a blue shirt, lined with streaks of 
white, open at the neck, a broad green sash, with a medal of "the Order 
of Liberators" at the end of it, hanging over his breast — such was the 
costume of "the aerial gentleman," whose "handsome and expressive 
countenance" boasted bushy whiskers and was shadowed by "a pro- 
fusion of black curls curiously festooned about his temples." "Who, 
sir, are you?" demanded the sheriff, imperiously. This great function- 
ary, it may be remarked, pronounced his English on the model of the 
monosyllabic Chinese, "imparting the cadences of Wesley to the accent- 
uation of Confucius." The fantastic-looking gentleman at once replied, 
with an agreeable air of assurance, "My name is O'Gorman Mahon." 
"I tell that gentleman," said the mighty Malony, "to take off that 
badge." There was a moment's pause, when the "chivalrous dandy" 
"slowly and articulately," answered: "This gentleman" [laying his 
hind on his breast) "tells that gentleman" [printing with the oth< r to the 
sheriff), "that if that gentleman presumes to touch this gentleman, that 
this gentleman will defend himself against that gentleman or any other 
gentleman, while he has got the arm of a gentleman to protect him." 
At the close of this singular address, a burst of applause shook the 
court-house. The pompous sheriff looked aghast, and, after a pause of 
irresolution, sat down quite discomfited. O'Gorman Malum pressed the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 459 

medal to his heart. O'Connell looked admiringly at his lieutenant. As 
Shiel says, "the first blow was struck." 

Sir Edward O'Brien proposed Mr. Fitzgerald "as a fit and proper 
person to serve in Parliament." Some doubted the sincerity of his zeal 
for Mr. Fitzgerald, as a feud had on former occasions existed between 
them, and a pitched battle even had once been fought between the ten- 
antry of their. two houses. Besides, Sir Edward's second son, William 
Smith O'Brien, then member for Ennis, destined to be the leader of the 
Young Ireland attempt at insurrection in '48 for which he received sen- 
tence of death, "was a member of the Catholic Association, and had 
recently made a vigorous speech in Parliament in defence of that body." 
But the mortification of his feudal pride, caused by the defection of his 
vassals, irritated Sir Edward against the opponents of Fitzgerald. The 
" squat, bluff, impassioned," good-natured, though choleric, old Milesian 
magnate, ever full of recollections of his royal ancestor, Briain Boi- 
roimhe, wept (he once produced a great effect in the House of Commons 
by bursting into tears while describing the misery of the Clare people) 
as "he complained that he had been deserted by his tenants, although 
he had deserved well at their hands, and exclaimed that the country 
was not one fit for a gentleman to reside in, when property lost all its 
influence and things were brought to such a pass." Sir A. Fitzgerald 
seconded Mr. Fitzgerald in a few words. Mr. Gore, an extensive landed 
proprietor, supposed by the people to be the descendant of a Cromwell- 
ian nailor, also spoke in favor of the cabinet minister. Then 0' Gorman 
Mahon, a Catholic, proposed, and Tom Steele, a Protestant, seconded, 
Daniel O'Connell. 

The rival candidates had now to address the assembly. Mr. Fitz- 
gerald, a man of the most prepossessing appearance, a graceful, amiable, 
self-possessed, accomplished gentleman, and an equally accomplished 
speaker, "delivered," says Shiel, "one of the most effective and dexterous 
speeches which it has ever been my good fortune to hear." His face 
showed pain and fear and the marks of anxious vigils. He retrained, 
however, from all exasperating expressions. "He spoke at first with a 
graceful melancholy." Had not the Association displayed a rigorous 
policy in throwing overboard one who, through his whole political life, 
had been a warm advocate of their cause ? He referred to his various 



460 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

services to the Catholics. He became impassioned when he referred tc 
his father, who, at that moment, was supposed to be at the point of 
death. " Efforts had been made to conceal from the old man the contest 
in which his son was involved." The speaker's grief was genuine. All 
sympathized with him when he turned aside to wipe away the tears 
that gushed into his eyes. Though the majority of those present were 
his opponents and O'Connell's enthusiastic partisans, yet, when he 
ceased to speak, "a loud and unanimous burst of acclamation" shook 
the court-house. 

All, who understood the workings of O'Connell's face, saw, as he rose 
to reply, that he was collecting all his might for a great effort to do away 
with the impression produced by the rival candidate. He bore Mr. 
Fitzgerald not the slightest ill-will, but he resolved, in a struggle where 
such vital interests were at stake, not to spare even the tenderest feel- 
ings of his antagonist, and to employ against him without scruple his 
boundless powers of vituperation. In fact, as Shiel says, it was "requi- 
site to render him for the moment odious." It was no case for delicate 
fencing. First he roused the popular passions by attacking Fitzgerald's 
allies. Without direct reference to the tradition that Mr. Gore's ancestor 
was a Puritan nailor, "O'Connell," says Shiel, "used a set of metaphors, 
such as 'striking the nail on the head,' 'putting a nail into a coffin,' which 
at once recalled the associations" attached to his name; "and roars of 
laughter assailed that gentleman on every side." Gore was said to be 
as stingy as he was rich. Extreme prudence in money-matters is un- 
popular in Ireland. O'Connell covered him with such derision on this 
point and on his assumed ancestry that in a few minutes he was com- 
pletely crushed. O'Connell followed up his first success I » v at once 
making a savage onslaught on Mr. Fitzgerald himself. Having drawn 
an odious picture of the murdered prime-minister Perceval, lie tinned 
round fiercely and asked his opponent with what face could he call him- 
self I heir friend, when the first act of his public life was to enlist under 
the banner of "the bloody Perceval." The furious vehemence of voice 
and gesture with which he sent this epithet home to the hearts of the 
people turned the tide of feeling against Mr. Fitzgerald. "This, too," 
said O'Connell, "is the friend of Peel — the bloody Perceval and t lie 
candid and manly Mr. Peel; and he is our friend! and he is everybody's 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 461 

friend ! The friend of the Catholic was the friend of the bloody Perceval, 
and is the friend of the candid and manly Mr. Peel!" 

This terrible speech galled Mr. Fitzgerald to the core. Often he 
would mutter, "Is this fair?" Above all, he felt stung to the quick 
when O'Connell, in ruthless mockery of his allusion to the almost hope- 
less illness of his aged father, said, "I never shed tears in public." 

On the second day the polling commenced. On that day the votes 
were nearly equal, owing to the sharp tactics of Fitzgerald's committee. 
In strict law, Catholics could not vote at elections without making a dec- 
laration on oath regarding their religious opinions, and getting a magis- 
trate's certificate of their having done so. This oath was usually dispensed 
with by consent of both candidates. Now Fitzgerald's committee insisted 
on its being administered, thereby completely taking O'Connell's by sur- 
prise. Next day, however, batches of freeholders were sworn at once. 
They were brought into a yard bounded by four walls. Twenty-five were 
placed against each wall. Twenty-five at a time were sworn. If this 
process of wholesale swearing made a mockery of the solemnity of 
oaths, the British legislature which imposed on Catholics the obli- 
gation of taking this absurd oath, chiefly relating "to the Pretender," 
deserved all the odium due to those who force people "to take the name 
of God in vain." 

Soon it became clear that Mr. Fitzgerald had not the slightest chance 
of being returned. That gentleman would fain have withdrawn from 
the contest, but his friends insisted on polling to their last man. The 
humors of this strange election were many and diverting. The high- 
sheriff, who was always in solemn tones of unconscious burlesque an- 
nouncing that he was "the first man in the county," became the butt 
of the lawyers. Playing on this lunatic's fantastic vanity, they would 
preface every legal argument with the words, "I feel that I address 
myself to the first man in the county." Blind to their ill-concealed 
mockery, the official noodle would smile and bow with what Shiel styles 
"an air of Malvolio condescension." Then some noise would be heard 
in the adjoining booths, on which he would start up in wrath and cry, 
" I declare, I do not think that I am treated with proper respect. Verily, 
I'll go forth and quell this tumult ; I'll show them I am the first man in 
the county, and I'll commit somebody." Soon, however, Dogberry would 



462 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 



return with a good-humored expression of face, saying, "It was only Mr. 
O'Connell; and I must say, when I remonstrated with him, he paid me 
proper respect. He is quite a different person from what I had heard. 
But let nobody imagine that I was afraid of him ; I'd commit him, or 
Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, if I was not treated with proper respect, for, by 
virtue of my office, I am the first man in the county." 

A young gentleman, named Whyte, one of O'Connell's agents, made 
good and diverting use of his talent for mimicry. More than once he 
frightened and confounded a deputy- sheriff, hostile to O'Connell, when 
about to commit some partisan of our hero's, by exclaiming, "in a death- 
bell voice," like the high-sheriff's, "Silence, Mr. Deputy; you are exceed- 
ingly disorderly. Silence !" Sometimes charges of undue influence were 
brought forward. Father Murphy of Corofin was called before the sheriff. 
"With a smile of ghastly derision," he asked, What was the charge 
against him? "You were looking at my voters," cries the accusing 
attorney. "But I said nothing; and I suppose that I am to be permit- 
ted to look at my parishioners." "Not with such a face as that," cries 
Dogherty, one of Fitzgerald's counsel. There was a roar of laughter at 
this sally, for terrible, in truth, was the solemn and spectral aspect of 
Father Murphy. "Let us see," says Shiel, O'Connell's counsel, "if there 
be an act of Parliament which prescribes that a Jesuit shall wear a 
mask." At this instant, one of O'Connell's agents rushes in excitedly. 
"Mr. Sheriff," he cries, "we have no fair play. Mr. Singleton is fright- 
ening his tenants; he caught hold of one of them just now, and threat- 
ened vengeance against him." This was apropos. "What !" cries Shiel; 
"is this to be endured? Do we live in a tree country, and under a con- 
stitution? Is a landlord to commit a battery with impunity, and is a 
priest to be indicted for his physiognomy and to be found guilty of a 
look?" After a long wrangle, the assessor decided that either priest or 
landlord actually interrupting the poll should be committed, but he 
"thought the present a case only for admonition." 

Shortly after, Mr. Vandeleur arrives from Kilrush, followed by a 
hundred of his tenants. He stands behind a carriage, with his hat off, 
vehemently addressing his serfs, lie stamps, waves his hat, shakes his 
clenched hands. Thousands of voices from the crowd through which 
they pass shout aloud, "Vote for your country, boys! Vote for the old 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 463 

religion ! Three cheers for liberty ! Down with Vesey, and hurrah foi 
O'Connell!" At length they reach the house where O'Connell lodges. 
Through the window of his apartment he rushes out on the temporary 
platform, canopied over with boughs, that had been erected in front of 
the house. He raises aloft his stalwart arm. A tremendous shout soars 
heavenward. The serfs become independent voters. Vandeleur is de- 
serted. That one wave of O'Connell's arm deprives him of all his fol- 
lowing. On this platform twenty or thirty can stand together. Here 
Lawless, Father Maguire, Father Sheehan from TVaterford, who had 
helped to overthrow the Beresfords, Dr. Kenny, a Waterford surgeon, 
the whole troop of orators in short, in turn performed their parts. Here 
the people are entertained with declamation, good stories, mimicry and 
fun. The habits and costume of Father Coffey, who had given his sup- 
port to Fitzgerald, are derided. Obvious puns on his name convulse 
the people with laughter. " The scorn and detestation," says Richard 
Lalor Shiel, "with which he was treated by the mob, clearly proved that 
a priest has no influence over them when he attempts to run counter to 
their political passions." Shiel heard a priest on this platform say some- 
thing to the populace in Irish. In a moment ten thousand peasants 
knelt and prayed. It was for the repose of the soul of a bribed voter 
of Fitzgerald's, who had just died. He had taken the bribery oath. 

Thus the day passed. At night, in a small room of a mean tavern, 
all the leading patriots and "divers interloping partakers of electioneer- 
ing hospitalities" would assemble to refresh exhausted nature. Huge 
piles of food were strewed on the deal boards and hungrily devoured. 
Then toasts were drunk, and exulting "hip, hip, hurras" followed. 
Whyte would mimic the high-slieriff riding on an elephant in Calcutta. 
The tears of Sir Edward O'Brien and the blank looks of Hickman, Fitz- 
gerald's conducting agent, gave food for endless mockery and mirth. 
But now Father Murphy's sepulchral voice would startle the revellers: 
"The wolf, the wolf is on the walk! Shepherds of the people, what do 
you here? Is it meet that you should sit in joyance while the free- 
holders remain unprovided, and temptation, in the shape of famine, is 
amongst them? Arise, I say, arise; the wolf is on the walk." Shiel 
tells us that "Nothing was comparable to the aspect of Father Murphy 
upon these occasions, except the physiognomy of Mr. Lawless. . . . The 



464 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

look of despair with which he surveyed this unrelenting foe to convivial- 
ity was almost as ghastly as that of his merciless disturber." Mean- 
while, below stairs the priests were employed in giving the peasant- 
voters, who lived too far from Ennis to return home, orders to victuallers 
and tavern-keepers to furnish the bearers with meat and beer. The use 
of whisky was sternly interdicted. Nothing could exceed the assiduity of 
the priests in the performance of this duty, which sometimes lasted far into 
the morning, save the patience with which the peasants, some of whom 
had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, waited each for his turn to 
speak to "his reverence." In truth, the self-denial of the Clare peas- 
antry, their spurning the temptation of bribes, above all their devotion 
and moral courage in braving the vengeance of their offended landlords, 
at whose mercy most of them lay so completely, appealed forcibly to 
every generous heart. The soldiery began to feel the deepest sympathy 
with them. The British empire was in manifest danger. In truth, the 
Clare election was a tremendous event. The day it ended Catholic 
emancipation was virtually won! 

And at length the poll did close. For O'Connell, there were two 
thousand and fifty-seven votes; for Fitzgerald, one thousand and seventy- 
five. It was argued before the assessor, Mr. Keatinge, that a Catholic 
could not be legally returned. But the objection was overruled, as it 
rested with the House of Commons itself to exclude a representative, if 
he refused the oath tendered to him. "Wherefore O'Connell was declared 
duly elected. Our hero seems to have arrived at the conclusion that, 
though a Catholic was legally excluded from the Irish Parliament and 
from the English Parliament, no law existed to prevent him from taking 
his scat in the Imperial Parliament. 

On the final day of the election the court-house was once more 
crowded. Mr. Fitzgerald appeared at the head of the baffled and 
beaten aristocracy of Clare. He made no effort to hide the pain lie 
tell, but he gained the respect alike of friends and foes by the high-bred 
calmness with which he bore his overthrow. O'Connell made a speech 
full of generous feeling and admirable taste; he begged Mr. Fitzgerald 
to forgive him for any offence he might have given him the first day. 
Mr. Fitzgerald unaffectedly assured him that whatever was said should 
be forgotten. "He was again hailed," says Shiel, "with universal ac- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 465 

clamation, and delivered a speech which could not surpass in good judg- 
ment and persuasiveness that with which he had opened the contest, 
but was not inferior to it." Mr. Shiel also tells us that during the con- 
test Mr. Fitzgerald could not conceal his astonishment and gloomy fore- 
bodings. At moments he would wholly forget himself and seem lost in 
melancholy reflections on the possibility of terrible events to come. 
"Where is all this to end?" was a question frequently put in his pres- 
ence, from replying to which he seemed to shrink. At the close of the 
poll, Mr. Shiel himself delivered an eloquent, generous and wise speech. 

Such was the memorable Clare election — perhaps the most important 
one in the entire history of English, Irish and Scotch elections. Two 
elections only can for a moment stand in comparison with it — the Mid- 
dlesex election in the last century, in which the demagogue Jack Wilkes 
is the prominent figure, and that Tipperary election which returned 
O'Donovan (Rossa), an Irish rebel suffering penal servitude under the 
treason-felony act, to the British House of Commons. The Clare elec- 
tion is certainly far more historically noteworthy than that of Middlesex. 
But should Ireland ever shake off the dominion of Great Britain, it will 
hardly be considered a more momentous event than the Tipperary elec- 
tion of 1869. However, at the time it occurred, the Clare election was 
pronounced in England "the most extraordinary event that had ever 
occurred under a system of popular representation." It was also said 
that, by this stroke, O'Connell had effected more in one day for the lib- 
eration of Ireland "than had been done in forty years by all other men." 
Of course, the infuriated aristocracy hated him now more inveterately 
than ever. 

When the election was over, O'Connell was chaired through Ennis. 
Sixty thousand men (probably this is exaggeration) are said to have 
surrounded and followed him, bearing green boughs. Houses, great and 
small, were decorated with evergreens or other boughs. In Limerick 
he was received enthusiastically. His whole progress to Dublin was a 
triumphal march. Vast crowds of horsemen (the numbers stated are 
hardly credible) formed his escort on the way. Numbers of persons got 
him to frank letters for them. These letters demonstrated everywhere 
that "the man of the people" was the member for Clare. It is impos- 
sible to give any adequate idea of the intensity of the joy and triumph 



466 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

with which the nation's heart beat high. In one week the rent reached 
a sum not much less than £3000. 

Much about the same time Jack Lawless was on his way to the 
North, attended, in every district he passed through, by a vast escort 
of peasantry. When he was approaching Ballibay in Monaghan, an 
immense force of Orangemen assembled there to attack him and his 
followers. These last were in no way desirous of avoiding the encounter. 
Indeed, it required the exertions of the clergy and the friendly remon- 
strances of the military commandant of the district, General Thornton, 
to prevent a collision. Lawless, to the chagrin and anger of his nume- 
rous followers, who wanted to advance, left his carriage, took horse and 
turned back. He does not seem to have merited the reproach which 
this retreat brought on his head. His conduct arose not from any lack 
of courage, but from a humane disinclination to countenance useless 
bloodshed. It was on this occasion that the Orange partisan, Sam 
Gray, so notorious for years in Ireland, first signalized himself and won 
the nickname of General Gray. 

The Association was becoming more formidable than ever. Thomas 
Wyse of Waterford planned a new arrangement. ''Liberal clubs" were 
established all over the island. The Association was the principal club. 
In every county and again in every parish similar clubs, under its con- 
trol, were established. To be able to read was a necessary condition of 
admission to the palish club. The subscription was trifling. The parish 
club elected its own president, secretary and treasurer. The secretary 
of the county club directed it. Later this year (in November) a solicitor, 
named Forde, proposed, with the sanction of O'Connell, a system of ex- 
clusive dealing; that the people should not ''deal with notorious Orange- 
men; and further, that a preference in dealing should be given by Roman 
Catholics to those who dissent from them in religion, but who may have 
proved by their acts that they are friendly to civil and religious liberty." 
Lord Cloncurry argued against this. N. P. O'Gorman, too, opposed it. 
It was finally negatived. Forde's resolution was to have been followed 
up by a run on the banks. Wyse says it would, if carried, have disor- 
ganized Irish society speedily, "and reduced the minister to the alterna- 
tive of a war of extermination or a hurried and reluctant concession of 
Catholic claims." In truth, it was the mere menace of these revolution- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 467 



ary measures which, in all probability, caused that emancipation meet- 
ing in the Rotunda which was presided over by the duke of Leinster, 
and based on a declaration in favor of emancipation, signed by two 
dukes, twenty-seven earls, two counts, eleven viscounts, twenty-two 
barons and the same number of baronets. Certainly, this meeting 
greatly tended to make Wellington and Peel see the necessity of conced- 
ing the relief bill of April, 1829. O'Connell is said to have given that 
meeting the credit of being the immediate cause of the concession to 
the demands of the Catholics. 

Shortly after the Clare election another occurrence took place, which 
was regarded by many as an infallible sign that emancipation was fast 
approaching. This was the speech delivered at Deny by " Derry Daw- 
son," as he was styled, Peel's brother-in-law and a member of the gov- 
ernment. The Orangemen of Derry were furious when they heard this 
trusted Orange leader admitting at once the vast power of the Catholic 
Association and the necessity of disarming it by settling the Catholic 
question. He repudiated any return to the penal-law system. The 
bigots, who listened to him, tried his temper by interruptions of every 
kind. His novel sentiments of toleration made them frantic. They 
hissed and hooted when he regretted "the degraded state of his Catholic 
countrymen." Nothing would content them but the violent suppression 
of the Association. Dawson was, at length, goaded to say, " I cannot 
express too strongly the contempt I feel for the persons who thus attempt 
to put me down." He would not "condescend to ask their votes though 
their suffrages would secure his return." Dawson lost his seat in Par- 
liament, in consequence of this oration. The Orange party never forgave 
his backslidings, his compromise with "Jezebel." It was believed at 
the time by many that his speech was made to order ; that his crafty 
brother-in-law had desired him to make it as "a feeler," thereby to test 
the spirit in which ministerial concessions to the Catholics would be 
received by the Ascendency faction. Much about the same time, at 
Manchester, Peel evaded speaking to the toast of "Protestant ascend- 
ency." 

The bigots made a last desperate rally. "Brunswick clubs" were 
established in numerous localities. At Ennis a meeting, called by the 
high-sheriff, assembled to form one. O'Gorman Mahon went to Ennis 



468 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

to oppose it, but he was refused admittance to the meeting. The sheriff 
and magistrates, fearing that their proceedings might cause disturbance, 
had summoned to Ennis a detachment of troops from Clare Castle. 
O'Gorman Malum expressed his opinions pretty freely to the officer in 
command. Wellington was indignant with Lord Anglesea for not dis- 
missing from the magistracy O'Gorman Mahon, for this conversation 
with the officer, and Tom Steele for adjuring his auditors, on one occa- 
sion, " by their alk<jiunce to the Association, to be tranquil." The duke 
also blamed the marquis for giving interviews to O'Connell, Lawless 
and others. The viceroy gave what appear to me satisfactory expla- 
nations of his conduct. O'Gorman Mahon's 'breach of decorum'' was 
not indictable. Steele's expressions had not been deposed to. The 
interviews really amounted to nothing. It appears that the miserable 
king was terribly vexed at the notion of the viceroy having granted 
interviews to those desperate conspirators and violators of peace, law 
and order — the agitators. Lord Anglesea was every day becoming more 
and more disinclined to use military violence against the Irish people. 
He was fast growing alarmed, too, at the increasing excitement of public 
feeling, and coming to the conclusion that it was hopeless to think of 
subduing the Association. "The carrying of party Hags is illegal. Put 
them down, and what do you gain by it? . . . The meetings will con- 
tinue." "The Brunswick clubs" embarrass him as much as the Asso- 
ciation. He is in dread of an insurrection. He writes to Lord Leveson 
Grower: "The final success of the Catholics is inevitable; no power 
under heaven can avert its progress." Even by suppressing a rebellion 
they would only "put off the day of compromise." Elsewhere he says: 
"No coercive legislative measures will get rid of existing evils unaccom- 
panied by concession." One of Anglesea'8 sons and some of his stall 
visited a meeting of the Association, where they were recognized. This 
indiscretion gave great offence to "the powers that be." A letter written 
by the marquis to the Catholic primate, Dr. Curtis, in some unaccount- 
able way came to light. In this letter he gives his opinion as to what 
the Catholics should do in the most sympathetic way. lie does not 
agree with the duke of Wellington, who, in a letter to Dr. Curtis, had 
expressed a wish that the question could be buried in oblivion for a 
short time. On the contrary, Anglesea thinks the Catholics should not' 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 469 

/ 

for a moment lose sight of their cause, but resort to every legal means 
"to forward" it. It is not wonderful that his lordship was recalled in 
January, 1829. As this dashing soldier had become a great favorite 
with the Irish people, enormous crowds accompanied him to Kingstown 
to bid him farewell. He was a sort of popular idol for a time with the 
credulous Irish. Indeed, he was naturally a good man. His letter to 
Lord Cloncurry, in which he consults him as to the means he should 
take to recommend himself to the Irish, is immeasurably droll, though 
the writer was probably unconscious of the fun : "I see a subscription 
for the distressed manufacturers of Dublin. Should I subscribe? What 
would be handsome? Or shall I order five waistcoats?" 

It is no wonder that the marquis doubted the policy of employing 
military force against the Irish cause, for the troops could not be de- 
pended on in such a conflict. The national sympathies and feelings of 
the Irish troops were being fast excited by the agitation. Soldiers were 
continually, at great risk to themselves, shouting for O'Connell, or call- 
ing on him to pay him their enthusiastic homage. After the Clare elec- 
tion, one of O'Connell's processions encountered a marching detachment. 
The sergeant, a young man named Ryan — according to our hero, " as 
handsome a fellow as ever he saw" — walked away from his men and 
asked "the Liberator" to shake hands with him. "In acting as I now 
do," said the sergeant, " I am infringing military discipline. Perhaps 1 
may be flogged for it; but I don't care. Let them punish me in any 
way they please — let them send me back to the ranks ; I have had the 
satisfaction of shaking the hand of the father of my country." O'Cun- 
nell says: "As to my enthusiastic young friend the sergeant, I after- 
wards understood that his little escapade was overlooked; and right 
glad I was to find that his devotion to me entailed no punishment on 
him." At a military station in England, in 1829, the soldiery, it is said, 
turned out to do O'Connell honor. "There are two ways of firing," said 
a soldier about this time, "at a man and over a man; and if we were 
called out against O'Connell and our country, I think we should know 
the difference." It was plainly time for Wellington to concede emanci- 
pation. 

In June, 1828, O'Connell laid the first stone of the Christian Brothers 
schools. I can only afford space simply to notice the incident. 



470 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 

Parliament met in February, 1829. The hour of emancipation had at last 
arrived. Though Wellington a short time previously had declared that "he could 
not comprehend the possibility of placing Roman Catholics in a Protestant legis- 
lature with any kind of safety, as his personal knowledge told him that no king, 
however Catholic, could govern his Catholic subjects without the aid of the 
pope," he had now determined that emancipation should be conceded. After 
the Rotundo meeting of the aristocracy he had been closeted with the king 
more than once, and had with considerable difficulty wrung a reluctant con- 
sent to the introduction of the relief measure, as a ministerial question, from 
that worthless and worn-out profligate, who now in his old age added bigotry 
to those vices that survived his youth and manhood. The king complained 
of his position to Lord Eldon in these words : " I am in the state of a person 
with a pistol presented to his breast. My ministers threatened to resign if the 
measure were not proceeded with, and I said to them, 'Go on!' when I knew 
not how to relieve myself from the state in which I was placed." He also said, 
" I hardly knew what I was about, when, after several hours' talk, I said, 'Go on !' " 
Lord Eldon's account of the old sinner's demeanor at this crisis is, indeed, whethei 
intended to be so or not, highly amusing: "His Majesty, at these interviews, was 
sometimes silent, apparently uneasy, occasionally stating his distress — the hard 
usage he received — his wish to extricate himself — that he did not know what to 
look to, what to fall back upon — that he was miserable beyond what he could 
express." J le also romanced about leaving England : "If I do give my consent," 
quoth this highly comic old gentleman, "I'll go to the baths abroad, and from theme 
to Hanover. I'll return to England no more." Other ravings were, "Let them 
get Clarence" (//« brother and successor, William the Fourth) "for a king;" "I'll 
create no Catholic peers." Lord Eldon does not seem to have felt anything like 
implicit belief in the sincerity of His Majesty's jeremiads. Once the king read 
him a letter which he said he had written. It would seem as if Eldon had consider- 
able doubts whether what his royal master read to him were really written at all. 

In spite, however, of all this vexation, whether real or simulated, the royal 
speech, which opened the session of Parliament, recommended the suppression of 
the Catholic Association and the subsequent consideration of Catholic disabilities 
with a view to their removal. The Catholic Association, having now thoroughly 
done its work, determined to anticipate the action of the law and dissolve itself. 

Shiel, who had heen privately talked to on the subject by George Frederick Yil- 
liers, afterwards earl of Clarendon, and viceroy in '48, with whose views he was 
easily induced to concur, made an able speech in favor of dissolution. O'Connell 
and the bishops also sanctioned this course. Before the Association dissolved, 
however, a vote of thanks was passed, in which the members stated, "That, as the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 471 

last act of this body, we do declare that we are indebted to Daniel O'Connell 
beyond all other men for its original creation and sustainment, and that he is 
entitled, for the achievement of its freedom, to the everlasting gratitude of Ire- 
land." In spite of this nominal dissolution, had a necessity arisen demanding 
such a course, the organization could easily have resumed its action. Its essential 
vigor was only dormant. O'Connell has been falsely accused of having promised 
not to commence any similar agitation, if emancipation were conceded. He only 
promised that the Association should be dissolved, and that, in seeking for the 
redress of other grievances, all exclusively Catholic agitation should be avoided. 
Such an object as repeal, for example, could only be won by a national move- 
ment representing Irishmen of all races and of every sect and denomination. 
Even now, in his moment of triumph, with emancipation within his grasp, O'Con- 
nell exclaimed : " To accomplish repeal, I would give up every other measure, and 
my exertions for such an object would meet with the co-operation of all sects and 
parties in Ireland." 

On the 5th of March, 1829, Peel moved for a committee of the whole House 
" for consideration of the civil disabilities of His Majesty's Roman Catholic sub- 
jects." The motion was carried by a large majority after a warm debate. "And 
now," says Mr. Mitchel, " arose the most tremendous clamor of alarmed Protest- 
antism that had been heard in the three kingdoms since the days of James the 
Second — the last king who had ever dreamed of placing Catholics and Protestants 
on something like an approach to equality. Multitudinous petitions, not only 
from Irish Protestants, but from Scottish presbyteries, from English universities, 
from corporations of British towns, from private individuals, came pouring into 
Parliament, praying that the great and noble Protestant state of England should 
not be handed over a prey to the Jesuits, the Inquisitors and the Propaganda 
Never was such a jumble of various topics, sacred and profane, as in those peti- 
tions — vested interests ; idolatry of the mass ; principles of the Hanoverian suc- 
cession ; the inquisition; eternal privileges of Protestant tailors or Protestant 
lightermen ; our holy religion ; French principles ; tithes ; and the beast of the 
Apocalypse — all were urged with vehement eloquence upon the enlightened 
legislators of Great Britain." 

Some of these alarmed petitioners were no doubt sincere in their fanaticism. 
Dr. Jebb, Protestant bishop of Limerick, had written to Sir Robert Peel on the 
11th of February. In this letter he says earnestly: "Infinitely more difficulties 
and dangers will attach to concession than to uncompromising resistance. ... In 
defence of all that is dear to British Protestants, I am cheerfully prepared, if 
necessary, as many of my order have formerly done, to lay down life itself." 
Contrast with this Dr. Doyle's prayer for the success of O'Connell, setting out for 



472 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 



the Clare election : " May the God of truth and justice protect and prosper you !" 
Mr. Mitchel naturally exclaims : " What very different, what very opposite, ideas 
of truth and justice had these two excellent prelates !" 

The wretched king struggled hard to withhold justice from his Catholic sub- 
jects. He tried even to form a new ministry and rid himself of the Wellington 
cabinet, but, finding his sinister efforts all in vain, at a late hour on the evening 
of March the 4th, he wrote to the duke, desiring him and his colleagues to with- 
draw their resignation, and giving them liberty to proceed with the measures of 
which notice had been given to Parliament. Meanwhile O'Connell, seeing that 
emancipation was now assuredly about to become law, though he had arrived in 
London to claim his seat for Clare, decided on not urging his claim for the present, 
lest he should embarrass the government 

And now at last, almost one hundred and thirty-seven years after the treaty 
of Limerick, the Catholics were emancipated. Peel introduced the relief measure 
into the Commons. After violent debates, characterized by the utmost bitterness 
of religious fanaticism, the bill passed, on the 30th of March, by a majority of 
thirty-six. Peel, in a letter to Bishop Jebb, says: "I can with truth affirm, that 
in advising and promoting the measures of 1829, I was swayed by no fear, except 
the fear of public calamity." On the :11st, the bill was sent up to the House of 
Lords. On the 2d of April, the duke of Wellington moved the second reading. 
He urged the necessity of passing it in order to "avert civil war." Thus it was 
conceded not in a spirit of enlightened justice, not to redress intolerable wrong, 
but merely as a state necessity. In a word, it was wrested from the British gov- 
ernment merely by tin- tone of circumstances. Hence it is no wonder that suc- 
ceeding English cabinets have endeavored to elude its spirit and make it as little 
beneficial to the Irish people as possible. However, such as it was, after violent 
debates it passed the Lords by a majority of one hundred and four. On the 13th 
of April the ignoble monarch, after a most theatric display of reluctance, after 
delays and tears, after breaking and trampling on the first pen handed to him 
(poor, petulant, diseased worm of humanity, destined never to see the close of the 
ensuing year), signed the bill, and Catholic emancipation became the law of the 
so-called United Kingdom of Qreat Britain and Ireland! 

The very day the king signed this bill "the sword brandished in the hand of 
Walker's statue, standing upon a lofty column on a bastion of Derry walls, fell 
with a crash and was shivered to pieces." To the bigots all seemed for ever lost. 
The reign of chaos had come again. If, indeed, people would only have agreed 
with Sir Harcourt Lees that the time had come to " put down Popery" by act of 
Parliament and send " the arch-agitator" to the Tower, there might have been yet 
some hope for the empire and mankind. The estimable king, if he had 




LOOS® H3E£\@®raS3!FD[E[lI 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 473 

the joower, might have adopted the views of the sage baronet. He said, " There 
are three kings in this country — King Arthur" {Wellington), "King George and 
King Dan ; but King Dan is the most powerful, and will oust the other two." 
Wellington observed, that of the Catholic question " the king never heard or 
spoke without being disturbed." The fanatics, both of Great Britain and Ireland, 
in their rage, seemed to believe Wellington and Peel mere agents of the pope. 
During the excitement kindled by the struggle, the earl of Winchelsea even went 
so far as to call the duke a traitor to his king and country. He absurdly accused 
the great captain of having had a design all along to break down the constitution 
of England and insidiously to introduce " Popery " into every department of the 
state. The duke challenged this intemperate nobleman, and they met in Battersea 
Fields. Lord Winchelsea, having by this time become somewhat sensible of the 
outrageous nature of his conduct, after manfully standing a shot from the prime 
minister, fired in the air and apologized. The duke bowed and walked off the 
field. The earl also wrote a creditable letter of retractation. 

The whole series of measures that, in '29, terminated the memorable struggle 
for emancipation consisted of three acts of Parliament : " 1st. An act for the sup- 
pression of the Association, as an illegal and dangerous body. 2d. A fatal act 
for the suppression of the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. In England the 
forty-shilling qualification was not abolished. 3d. What was properly called the 
Emancipation or Belief Act. It was saddled with neither a veto clause nor with 
any provision for pensioning the clergy. It abolished the old oath against tran- 
substantiation, and substituted another long-winded one for the exclusive use of 
Catholics, on taking which any member of that persuasion might, if elected, take 
his seat in Parliament. Catholics, on taking it, might also be members of any lay 
body corporate, and do corporate acts and vote at corjDorate elections, but not join 
in a vote for presentation to a benefice in the gift of any corporation. The Church 
of England still remained the established religion of Ireland. Any one taking 
the new oath had to swear allegiance to the Crown — promising to maintain the 
Hanoverian settlement and succession ; declaring that it is no article of the Cath- 
olic faith "that princes excommunicated by the pope may be deposed or murdered 
by their subjects ; that neither the pope nor any other foreign prince has any 
temporal or civil jurisdiction within the realm ; promising to defend the settlement 
of property as established by law ; solemnly disclaiming, disavowing and abjuring 
' any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law ;' 
and engaging never to exercise any privilege conferred by that act ' to disturb or 
weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government.' " The act further pro- 
vides that no Catholic shall be lord-lieutenant or lord-chancellor. The latter 
functionary regulates the guardianship of minors and decides in what religion 



474 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

they shall be trained in the absence of express directions left by their parents. 
Ke also controls and cancels at his pleasure the commissions of magistrates. A 
Catholic, however, can to-day be chancellor. Lord O'Hagan, the present Irish 
chancellor, is the first Catholic who has attained that dignity for many a long 
generation. Since Mr. Gladstone's accession to the office of prime minister the 
Church of England has ceased to be the established religion of Ireland. Provis- 
ions against monastic institutions, and menacing nuns and friars with severe pen- 
alties, also accompanied emancipation ; but these provisions, from that day to this, 
have remained without force. 

The act disestablishing the forty-shilling freeholders almost neutralized the 
benefits of emancipation. A county qualification five times as great as that of 
England was now required in Ireland. Peel pretended that the forty-shilling 
franchise caused the landlords to subdivide their lands too minutely, that it had 
given them before, and that it now gave the priests, too much control over elec- 
tions. The abolition of this franchise took away the motive, which had hitherto 
prompted the landlords to give leases to small farmers, and the restraint which 
kept them from taking advantage of the new and cheap ejectment laws in carry- 
ing out wholesale evictions of their tenantry. And now commenced that fell 
system of " extermination," as it is styled in Ireland, that has driven so many 
myriads of the Irish race to seek new homes and a happier lot across the wild 
waters of the broad Atlantic. It was in vain that Lord Duncannou. Lord Pal- 
merston and Mr. Huskisson argued that, " if the forty-shilling freeholders had 
been corrupt, like those of Penrhyn, their disfranchisement might be defended ; 
but the only offence of the persons against whom the bill was directed had been 
that they exercised their privilege honestly and independently, according to their 
conscience." Mr. Mitchel says : " It is singular that O'Connell said not a word 
at any meeting, nor wrote any letter, protesting against this wholesale abolition of 
the civil and political rights of those to whom he owed his election for Clare. He 
thus consented by his silence to see cut away from under his own feet the very 
groundwork and material of all effective political action in Ireland." O'Connell 
has been much and severely condemned for not battling vigorously against this dis- 
franchisement, which helped to make his best efforts for the advancement of the 
interests of his country impotent and futile, and which he often lamented bitterly. 
The writer of the clever life of O'Connell, published by Mullany of Dublin, 
makes a statement somewhat at variance with the passage just quoted from Mr. 
Mitchel. He says: "Against this bill" (that of disfranchisement) "O'Connell, 
then in London, protested and agitated in the most vehement manner. With his 
own hand he drew out a petition against the measure, and proclaimed, at a meet- 
ing at the ' Thatched House,' his willingness to forfeit emancipation rather than 



THE LiJVE OF DANIEL COttNEELi,. 475 

see the freeholders disfranchised. Unfortunately, O'Connell's efforts were counter* 
acted by Lord Cloacurry, etc." 

A petition had been presented against the return of O'Connell for Clare. 
But, after due investigation, the committee having reported hin? duly elected, he 
considered himself entitled to take his seat, subject only to the new oaths. He was 
fortified in this view by the opinions of some of the most able lawyers of England. 
On the 15th of May he proceeded to the House to assert his right. Crowds filled 
the public ways from Charing Cross to St. Stephen's, anxious to see the great Irish 
agitator. The House of Commons was crowded in every part. The galleries 
were full of spectators. Eager groups were on all sides discussing the one absorb- 
ing topic of the day- -the new act. A great number of peers were present. In 
a word, the exci' lausnt ^ es unpr ;cedented. O'Connell was introduced in the usual 
form by Lords Ebrington and Duncannon. At length the Speaker said, "The 
member to be sworn will be pleased to come to the table and take the oaths." 
The interest of the scene was now at its highest point. The abrogated oaths were 
presented to him by the clerk of the House — one, the oath of supremacy, to the 
effect that the king is the head of the Church ; the other, " that the sacrifice of 
the mass is impious and abominable." Peel, baffled and beaten on the grand 
question, in order to gratify his mean spite against his old antagonist, had cun- 
ningly and dexterously inserted a clause in the relief bill admitting only such 
Catholics, as should "after the commencement of that act be returned as members 
jf the House of Commons," to take their seats under the new oaths. Of course, 
O'Connell refused to take the old oaths. He waved away the pasteboards on 
which they were fixed. " You will be good enough to inform the Speaker that I 
do not think I am bound to take these oaths." As he persisted in his refusal, the 
Speaker courteously, but firmly, ordered him to retire. O'Connell looked eagerly 
round the House, bowed and still stood opposite the Speaker, but without making 
any remark. Brougham rose to speak, upon which the Speaker called out 
" Order !" and repeated to O'Connell that he must withdraw. The latter bowed 
respectfully and withdrew in silence. 

On the 18th of May, Peel moved that O'Connell should be heard at the bar 
of the House. This was agreed to. Advancing to the bar, attended by a brothsr- 
Kerryman, Pierce Mahony the attorney, O'Connell asserted his claim in a long 
and powerful argument. His temperate address produced a favorable effect on the 
minds of his hearers. He said, at the close, that it was his desire to address that 
House with befitting courtesy, but that still he was there to demand his seat as a 
right. After the close of his speech, the question was argued by the ablest lawyers 
of England. Though their arguments were ingenious and powerful, they have 
no7' little interest for the general reader. Suffice it to say, O'Connell and hia 



476 THE LIFE 0F DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

advocates alike pleaded in vain. His claim to sit under the new oaths was rejected. 
The duke of Orleans, afterwards the astute King Louis Philippe, and his amiable 
eldest son, doomed to a shocking and untimely death by accident, were among the 
spectators of this scene. On the next day our hero appeared for the third time 
at the bar of the Commons. After announcing the decision of the House to him, 
the Speaker said, "Are you willing to take the oath of supremacy ?" "Allow me 
to look at it?" replied O'Connell. When he had glanced at it for a few moments, 
he looked up and said : " In this oath I see one assertion a.s to a matter of fact, 
which I know to be false. I see a second assertion as to a matter of opinion, which 
I do not believe to be true." Once more O'Connell retired. Forthwith a writ 
was issued to hold a fresh election for the county Clare. That very night O'Con- 
nell, who had vainly offered Sir Edward Denny £3000 if he would nominate 
him to his pocket-borough, prepared a second address to the people of Clare. He 
appealed to Clare, insulted in his person, from the unjust decision of the House 
of Commons. To the people of Clare was due the glory of converting Peel and 
conquering Wellington. They had achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. 
Another victory in Clare was necessary to defeat "the insidious policy of those 
men who, false to their own party" {the Tories), "can never he true tn us, and 
wlin have yielded not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us freedom of con- 
science " He hoped to be the instrument of erasing from the statute-book "that 
paltry institution of French Jacobinism," the clause against " the monastic orders." 
He would struggle for the repeal of the disfranchisement act, which was "a direct 
violation of the union," of the subletting act, which made "the destitute more 
miserable," and of the vestry bill. He would attack "grand-jury jobbing and 

grand-jury assessment." He would seek to procure an equitable distribute I 

chinch property between the poor and the working clergy, also law reform and 

parliamentary reform. He expresses disapproval of the Fnglish system of j r- 

laws. It is said that this address was submitted to Lord Anglesea and other 
members of the aristocracy, who struck out some of the holder passages, particu- 
larly such as referred to the repeal of the union. 

It is almost needle--, to Bay that the gratitude of the Irish people to * >'Connell 
lor his glorious achievement was boundless. He was now indeed their " liheratoi " 
ami idolized hero. As a grand testimonial of the nation's gratitude a sum of not 
less, it is said, than 0),<HM) was presented to him. To this sum Cornelius 
McLoughlin of Dublin subscribed £500, Jeremiah Murphy of Cork £300, Denis 
Scully £100 For twenty-nine years O'Connell had served the people without 
fee or reward. But every succeeding year of his life, up to the days of the 
famine, a large voluntary tribute was given to him by his countrymen. One day 
in the year a collection was made in till the chapels throughout the island, to he 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 477 

devoted to the private requirements of "the Liberator." He now gradually gave 
up his regular practice at the bar with its large remuneration. His services hence- 
forth belonged almost exclusively to the Irish people. This tribute was absolutely 
necessary to keep him free from a state of constant embarrassment, for he was at 
no period of his life prudent in pecuniary matters. He entirely lacked the art 
of husbanding his private resources. 

Nothing could equal the enthusiasm with which O'Connell was received on his 
return to Ireland. Thousands, on foot, and on horseback, and in carriages, met 
him in Kingstown. This, I think, is the reception which I remember witnessing, 
with childish enthusiasm, from a hotel-window in that town, when I was a very 
little boy. Thousands filled Merrion Square to hear " the Liberator " speak from 
his balcony. At an aggregate meeting, £5000, still remaining in the coffers of the 
Association, were voted in aid of his second canvass. His journey from Dublin 
to Ennis was one wondrous triumphal progress. Every town through which he 
passed was a confusion of multitudinous masses of human beings, of green boughs, 
shouts of rejoicing and wild excitement. Nenagh was illuminated. It was eight 
in the morning when he arrived in Limerick. Being fatigued, be slept till two in 
the afternoon. Meanwhile the crowds in the street talked in low tones lest they 
should disturb his repose. At the same time a huge tree with fresh green boughs 
was planted in front of his hotel. And now musicians sitting on the branches 
played national tunes. When O'Connell came forth, a tremendous cheer greeted 
him. He addressed the populace from his carriage. The trades of Limerick, 
with banners flying, escorted him out of their city. He entered Ennis in a 
triumphal car, in the midst of exulting thousands. 

About this time William Smith O'Brien, afterwards O'Connell's political associ- 
ate in the repeal movement, wrote a strange letter, which spoke of our hero's "extrav- 
agant pretensions" regarding emancipation, and told the people that it had long 
been a question with "the most attentive observers . . . whether his intemperance 
had not been the chief cause of its delay." O'Connell called this letter "a very fool- 
ish and somewhat ferocious address ;" also, "an apish and presumptuous manifesto." 
He revenged himself by discovering an absurd pedigree for Smith O'Brien. The 
four baronets, his progenitors, were a tinker's apprentice, a horse-jockey, a place- 
man and a hypocrite. All this is surely very lamentable. Nor did the mattei 
end here. O'Brien stated in this address that O'Connell was not supported by 
any of the gentry of Clare. Now Steele and O'Gorman Mahon were natives of 
Clare. Accordingly, the fiery Tom Steele wrote an angry reply, which drew forth 
a challenge from Smith O'Brien. They met in Kilburn Meadows, near London. 
in June, 1829. O'Brien's second was a gentleman rejoicing in what Lord Byron 
would call "the grim cognomen" of Woronzow Greig. Steele was accompanied 



478 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

by O'Gorman Mahon, who intended, when Steele's affair should be decided, to 
send a friend to O'Brien on his own account. Steele was resolved not to run 
short of ammunition at all events, for he brought a flask of powder and a bag of 
bullets to the ground. After an exchange of shots, Mr. Greig declared that Mr. 
O'Brien was quite satisfied. Nothing could exceed the ludicrous dismay of the 
future Head Pacificator, Steele, at this pacific announcement. " My God ! I hope 
Mr. O'Brien is not seriously hurt," quoth Tom, who thought nothing short of a 
dreadful wound could account for Mr. O'Brien's foregoing the pleasure of another 
shot. But Mr. O'Brien was safe and sound, and very properly quite satisfied. 
When O'Gorman Mahon's friend politely iutimated that his principal, as a Clare 
gentleman, expected satisfaction from Mr. O'Brien, that gentleman at once said, 
" My language did not apply to Mr. Mahon." 

O'Connell visited Dublin before his second Clare election. A public banquet 
was given to him. Something he said on this occasion irritated a little crazy 
attorney, named Toby Glascock. This individual swore he would shoot O'Connell 
" through the white liver without touching his black heart." He roamed about 
like an eccentric wild beast, seeking " that ruffian O'Connell." Finally his servant 
should flog O'Connell through the streets. O'Connell thought it high time t" 
have this fire-breathing foe bound over to keep the peace. In the police-office, 
when our hero spoke of the threat that the servant should perform the work of 
flagellation, Toby said all Europe would grin at his learned adversary's statement. 
Then he untied his attorney's bag, from which a little grinning black servant, in 
green livery, came forth — the terror of " the Colossus." All present were con- 
vulsed with mirth. "This," said Toby, "is my servant, who has caused so much 
alarm to the great Agitator." This time the laugh was most assuredly against 
our humorous hero, who looked, if not exactly foolish, at least like a man more or 
less discomfited. 

Making another triumphal journey to Ennis, O'Connell, on the 30th of July, 
was re-elected for Clare without opposition, to the intense delight of the Irish 
nation. In vain Peel had hurried on the new registration, with a view, if pos- 
sible, to defeat him. O'Connell began to speak of repeal of the union. Ah ! if 
the Irish people had only then been a united people, what might not O'Connell 
at that crisis have achieved? Perhaps even our national independence! But, 
alas ! the Orange faction were utterly irreconcilable. 

One good result of emancipation was that the patronizing airs of Protestanta 
to Catholics gradually ceased. There was no longer any need of servile deference 
from the Catholic to the Protestant gentleman who was good enough to join tin' 
Catholic movement, and who was too often treated as though he were a small demi- 
god. It was no longer necessary to purchase the assistance and advocacy of gra- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 479 

cious Parliamentary patrons by allowing them to use "a tone of condescension 
aud generous protection and patronage, not a little galling to some of the proud 
spirits" among the Catholics. O'Connell and others chafed under " these assump- 
tions of exalted superiority, and longed for ' emancipation ' from this petty degra- 
dation and annoyance as heartily and earnestly" as from the yoke of British 
bigotry. I have here quoted some expressions from John O'Connell. O'Neill 
Daunt speaks to the same purpose. 

In spite of the greatness of his achievement, however, O'Connell and his more 
thoughtful friends were dissatisfied. Catholics were still looked on by law as 
civilly and politically inferior to Protestants. By the Crown lawyers, Catholics 
were still, in violation of law, shamefully excluded from juries. More, in short, 
was required to make the victory complete. At Ennis and Youghal, O'Connell 
enforced the necessity of repeal of the union, promising never to rest till it 
should be won — " a pledge which, indeed," says Mr. Mitchel, " he labored all his 
life to redeem." Even in the very year of triumph, '29, the country was full of 
agrarian troubles. Tithes were rigorously extorted, and consequently some tithe- 
proctors were made to eat their processes and had their ears cut off. Alarmed 
magistrates called for the application of the " Insurrection Act." The agricultural 
produce of the people was every day carried off" in ships; no custom-house accounts 
of the amount borne away from Ireland were kept, for in 1826 the export of agri- 
cultural produce had been cunningly placed on the footing of a coasting-trade. 
Chairmen of quarter sessions, sheriffs and bailiffs were then, as since, busy with 
ejectments. Is it any wonder, then, that agrarian crime is perennial in Ireland ? 
It is, indeed, some slight consolation that the murders in Ireland are usually agra- 
rian, such as are looked on by the people as deeds of irregular warfare against 
oppressors ; that those murders banned by the common morality of mankind — 
such as " murders for money, from jealousy, or in personal quarrel — have been at 
all times much more rare in Ireland than in England." Mr. Mitchel omits men- 
tioning, in the passage I quote from, the laudanum-poisonings of children and the 
wife-murderings, by poison or otherwise, so common in that model country. 

It is no wonder, then, that the Liberator himself, at some of the triumphal ban- 
quets given to him, almost denounced the Emancipation Act for its flaws and 
shortcomings. He observes : " The Catholic Association, consisting of 1400 Prot- 
estant members and 13,000 Catholic members, forced the ministers to grant eman- 
cipation, and the ministers put the Association down. . . . The details of this bill 
are ludicrous — particularly Mr. Leslie Foster's clause, the twenty-seventh, where 
a Catholic judge — Michael O'Loghlen, for instance — can go to mass, but his wig and 
gown must stay at home. The judge may continue a Catholic, but the powdered 
wig and gown must still remain Protestant. The mayor may also be a Catholic, 



4S() THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. 



but such is the sage, grave and profound legislation of Leslie Foster that his mace 
must be a Protestant mace." {Laughter.) Lord Macaulay, in his Essay on Sh 
William Temple, I think, speaks contemptuously of this miserable meanness of 
the small emancipators. A great man, he says, might, indeed, extirpate the 
Catholics, root and branch, but a great man would never emancipate them and, at 
the same time, be so little in his policy as to deny them the petty privileges just 
referred to. 

I shall conclude this chapter with the substance of a portion of the article 
called " '82 and '29," which I wrote for the first number of the Dublin Irish 
People, in 1863, to show that England, in making concessions to Ireland, has 
always a sinister policy in view. I have already, in this work, quoted from this 
article, and I promised to refer to it again at the close of my narrative of 
emancipation : 

" If the English government had not conceded emancipation quietly, the Irish 
Catholics would, at length, have taken up arras to fight for their religious liberties. 
The liberal Protestants would have joined them, and the struggle would have 
finally expanded into the grand proportions of a war of independence. Ireland 
would probably now be a country rejoicing in the blessings of independence, rich 
in the memories of a heroic national struggle, strong with the dignity, self-respect 
and energy which result from success in such a struggle ; instead of being to-day 
a by-word and a mockery among the nations, she might be, in very deed, the 
freest, the most prosperous, the most glorious island of the sea ! . . . But England, 
insidiously and fatally for Ireland, conceded it" (emancipation) "ere a blow was 
struck." This deprived it of many "ennobling associations of sacrifice and 
heroism." Its being gained separately from national independence was also an 
unlucky feature. " Being won peacefully, this was a matter of course." It chiefly 
benefited " the upper and middle classes of Catholics." Leaving the masses in 
misery, it "and the subsequent corporation reforms opened up the paths of profes- 
sional and parliamentary distinction to the wealthy and educated Catholics; in 
short, completely satisfied their ambition. This was a serious blow to the national 
hopes of Ireland. Those intelligent and educated Catholics, who ought to form 
the leaders, guides, champions and rallying-points of the people in any struggle 
for social and national regeneration, are separated from them ever since. Having 
gained their own point, having secured their own interests, gratified their own 
sordid ambition, they take no further part in stiuggles for country or countrymen. 
It is, in short, always an insidious and fatal boon, when the claims of what are 
styled the upper classes of a community are conceded separately from the rights 
of the people at large. The class gratified is, thereby, bought over from the 
struggle for the general weal. Thus, emancipation in Ireland, separated from the 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 481 

cause of independence, has afforded a means to the foreign government of Eng- 
land of bribing and corrupting wealthy or educated Catholics — of seducing them 
from the' national ranks." These denationalizing effects would not be compen- 
sated for even if the fact of our having Catholic judges and magistrates secured 
a fairer administration of justice. But "as long as Ireland's present connection 
with England lasts, whenever a Catholic peasant or patriot is arraigned before 
him on political or agrarian charges, the Catholic judge will prove as supple an 
instrument of tyranny as the most bigoted Orange partisan could be. Truly, it 
can afford slender consolation to the Catholic victim of landlordism to know that 
the special commissioner, who sentences him so impressively to be hanged, is of 
the same creed with himself." 

One other drawback to emancipation is that, appearing to have removed 
greater grievances and "ignominy from the people than it really did, it takes 
away certain healthy elements of wrath against British rule from the minds of the 
people, who unfortunately are, in most cases, more influenced by shows than by 
realities. To benefit Ireland thoroughly, emancipation should never have been 
separated from the general national cause. It and Ireland's independence should 
have sunk or swam together, and it should have been won by the sword I" * 

* Authorities: MitcheFs "History;" "Life of O'Connell" published by Mullany; Darey Magee's 
" O'Connell ;" " O'Connell's Speeches," etc., by John O'Connell ; Daunt's " Eecollections " and " Ire 
land and her Agitators;" Wyse's "Association;" "Memoirs" by Sir R. Peel; Twiss's "Life of 
Eldon ;" " Life of Wellington ;" Shiel's " Sketch of the Clare Election ;" Macaulay's " 
Alison's " Europe ;" " Dublin Irish People," 1863 ; Lord Anglesea's Correspondence, etc. 




CONCLUSION. 

O'CONNELL AT DaRRYNANE — VARIETIES — PARLIAMENTARY CAREER — LAST RePEAI AG1TATIOH 

— The Famine — O'Connell's last illness and death — His character. 

HE space at my disposal does not admit of my giving any detailed account of the sub- 
^^ sequent years of O'Connell's life. It was, indeed, at first, my intention to relate at 
$J some length the story of his last repeal agitation; but, on mature reflection, I arrived 
at the conclusion that, being limited in space, I should better succeed in presenting 
the reader with a complete and vivid picture of O'Connell in all his greatness by confining 
myself almost exclusively to a full and detailed account of the grand, triumphant achieve- 
ment of his life. If I had tried to accomplish everything by overcrowding my canvas, I 
should probably have succeeded in doing nothing well. I am the more reconciled to the plan I 
have adopted when I consider that, up to the victory of emancipation, O'Connell's life, like tl» 
history of Cortes up to the final capture of the city of Mexico, possesses something like the unity 
of an epic poem. After emancipation, just as with the closing years of the career of Cortes, the 
unity of O'Connell's life is at an end. Many of the incidents of these closing years of his life are, 
no doubt, interesting, but many of them also have something of the sameness of a twice-told tale. 
The same features are constantly reappearing. Besides, in his career in the British Parliament, up 
to the commencement of the final repeal agitation, we recognize comparatively few of the distin- 
guishing characteristics of the great Irish agitator — he becomes more like the British politician. 
In the last repeal agitation, indeed, he is something like the O'Connell of his palmy days, his aspi- 
rations are perhaps nobler than ever, but his policy is less bold. Some fatal mistakes are made. 
The movement is not only incomplete, but absolutely a failure ; his death takes place before tht> 
melancholy national drama of repeal reaches its ignominious close. This biography, then, only 
professes to give a detailed history of the triumphant pen "1 of "the Liberator's" career. 

A very slight sketch, however, of his latter days is due to the curiosity of the reader. Let us 
first, however, glance at him in his moments of relaxation, at Darrynane Abbey, after the glorious 
fatigues of his last emancipation campaign. There by the wild sea-shore, sheltered by mountains. 
in his quaint old house, buiit piecemeal at different times, without any regard to uniformity of plan, 
but quite capable of accommodating the numerous guests his warm-hearted hospitality gathers 
around him, he is as happy and beloved in the bosom of his family and people as any patriarchal 
chieftain of the old days. Nothing could equal the love he bore his children and grandchildren 
save their affection for him. Once Peter Hussey said to him, " Dan, you should not bring in your 
children after dinner; it is a heavy tax upon the admiration of the company." "Never mind, 
Peter," said O'Connell, gayly; "I admire them so much myself, that I don't require any one to 
help me." His eldest daughter playfully said she was afraid he should spoil her Mary. His reply 
was, "I don't think I shall ; I know I did my best to spoil you, my love, and I could not succeed." 
In a speech at Belfast, in January, 1841, from which I have quoted already, he talks of his "angel 
daughters," always "dutiful and kind" to him, whose "affection soothes every harsher moment of 
Sis life." He also calls thern "attendant angels waiting about him." In the same speech hi" 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 483 

speaks of "the chirping of his darling granddaughters sounding sweetly m his ears," and says that 
whenever they appeal to him, right or wrong, he decides in their favor. Nothing can be more en- 
gaging than the picture of O'Connell's home-life at Darrynane. His children and grandchildren 
were merry and happy as the day was long. All his dependants were enthusiastically attached to 
him. 

It was glorious to see him hare-hunting in the mountains even before breakfast, using his leap- 
ingpole with a young man's activity, joyously drinking in the full cry of the shaggy Irish beagles 
and the enlivening shouts of men and boys, sent back by the myriad echoes of the hills. The 
huntsmen, in their gay red jackets, were not more alive and merry than O'Connell himself. There 
he was, now eagerly bounding along from rock to rock to keep the chase in view, anon pouring 
forth a stream of anecdote and jest, or laughing, as he quizzed some London guests, unaccustomed 
to mountain-life, for their lack of agility. Then after the chase, with appetites sharpened by the 
*port and the mountain air, the whole company would breakfast on a fragment of rock, in a shel- 
tered nook, a glorious sky overhead, wildly-magnificent scenery around. The delight which 
O'Connell took in the natural beauties of his native Kerry is well described by himself in an elo- 
quent letter written in October, 1838, to Walter Savage Landor, the poet, in which he says that 
the man "so often called a ferocious demagogue is, in truth, a gentle lover of nature." 

O'Connell's domestic chaplain said mass every morning at nine o'clock. The ordinary breal' 
fast took place at ten. O'Connell sat at table in his dressing-gown and tasselled cap reading hi 
letters and the papers. At dinner there was generally a numerous company. No sectarian topics 
marred the harmony of that festive board. Men of all shades of religious and political opinion 
were welcome to Darrynane. Though O'Connell was zealous about his religion, even fond of con- 
troversy — as shown by his encounters with the Kildare-street people and with Noel and Gordon, 
already described, and, on another occasion, by his stout refutation of certain attacks on the evi- 
dences of Christianity, made in his presence by Count Maceroni, a scientific Neapolitan, who had 
been aide-de-camp to King Joachim Murat, and had published something about experiments he had 
made in the art of flying — in spite of this occasional interest in controversial subjects, O'Connell 
was not in the least a bigot. In fact, the extent of his liberality would displease some of the nar- 
row zealots of the present day. When a bigoted Catholic said that it was impossible any Protr 
estant could have the plea of " invincible ignorance," O'Connell remarked, " The fellow has no 
right to judge his neighbor's conscience ; he does not know what goes to constitute invincible ignor- 
ance." O'Connell was unwilling that his eldest son's wife, a Protestant lady, should conform to 
Catholicity unless she really believed in the Catholic doctrines. He was shocked when his friend, 
Mr. Daunt, seemed to doubt the efficacy of a deathbed repentance. He was very fond of Quakers, 
and, on the other hand, some of the most eminent members of that persuasion had the highest 
respect for him, as had also the celebrated Scotch Presbyterian divine, Dr. Chalmers, who, in spit* 
of their very different religious and political creeds, said of him, " He is a noble fellow, with the 
gallant and kindly, as well as the wily, genius of Ireland." 

In Darrynane he enjoyed himself more than anywhere else. In his garden, picturesquely sit- 
uated amongst rocks, with its fine old hollies, he had a favorite walk. There was a circular turret, 
too, perched high on an ivy-festooned rock in the middle of the shrubbery, which commanded a 
wide prospect of the ocean and the neighboring hills, to which he oft retired to meditate in solitude 
upon his political schemes. In Darrynane he was comparatively free from various classes of bores 
that were wont to pester him elsewhere. Among these were gossiping visitors, who seemed to think 
his time their property ; rapturous and patriotic admirers belonging to that sex, which in his gallant 
moods he used to call " the fairer and better " one (" How I hate to have those women pelting in upon 
me I" he once exclaimed on the exit of a talkative dame of this class); male savans, like him who 



48-4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 

interrupted him on one of his most busy days with a long and elaborate disquisition upon an 
ancient Egyptian festival ; loquacious chairmen at meetings and banquets ; persons who bored him 
to sit for his portrait or to give his autograph. Wilkie and Du Val fouud it very hard to get him to 
give formal sittings. Of autographs he was liberal enough till age made writing an irksome task. 
Shortly before his death he asked Mr. Daunt if he wished for any. Mr. Daunt said, he did. 
Upon which O'Conuell said, laughing, "Very well, I'll desire my secretary to write as many as 
you want." To the despot of Russia, Nicholas, he sternly refused to give his autograph. He was 
more complaisant to Louis, the poetical king of Bavaria, who himself wrote a letter in English to 
Mr. O'Meara, in which he says, "I request you to say my thanks especially to Mr. D. O'Connell. 
for his kindness in fulfilling my desire in such an obliging way." To conclude this brief accouut 
of our hero's "bores:" a modest priest, who was in difficult circumstances, on the strength of 
having been once introduced to him on the deck of a steamer, begged O'Conuell to allow himself 
and his two sisters " to make Darryuaue their home until more prosperous times." He trusted to 
'"the Liberator's' well-known benevolence." O'Connell said he had not the honor of his acquaint- 
ance. His reverence then reminded him of their introduction. 

At Darryuane, on days when he did not hunt, he spent two hours after breakfast at newspapers 
and letters. Then he would stroll for a while on the beach or in the garden, or retire to his turret. 
Mr. Daunt tells us O'Connell sometimes took a lively interest in pointing out to him with minute- 
ness, among the surrounding rocks, the course of some hunt, the various turns of the hare and the 
exploits of the dogs. On returning to the house, he would remain in his study till dinner, at which 
meal he was generally talkative and jocular. He would sit for about au hour after dinner, and 
then return to the study, nor leave it till bed-time. In this study Mr. Daunt ouce found him read- 
ing Gerald Griffin's "Collegians," which was his favorite work of fiction. He had been counsel for 
Scan Ian, the man from whom the Hardress Cregarj of the novel was drawn, and had " knocked up " 
the principal witness against him. " But all would not do; there were proofs enough besides to 
convict him." O'Connell was very fond of novels. Dickens was a great favorite with him. He 
followed the fortunes of little Nell, in "The Curiosity Shop," with intense interest. On coming to 
her death, however, he angrily threw away the book and exclaimed, "I'll never read another line 
that Boz writes! The fellow hadn't talent enough to keep up Nell's adventures with interest and 
bring them to a happy issue, so he kdls her to get rid of the difficulty." Scott he seems to have 
thought the best of novelists, but also a great bigot. He praises Bulwer's "Night and Morning," 
but his acuteness detects that author's legal blunder in supposing that Philip Beaufort, the hero, 
bad "no mode of establishing his own legitimacy except by producing the certificate, or the registry, 
of his parent's marriage. . . . Philip's mother would have been a sufficient witness in her sou's 
behalf. Philip need only have levied distress on the estate for his rents. . . . This comes of men 
writing of matters they know nothing about. Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer, and always avoided 

such errors." He also says, "This is the only one of Bulwer's novels in which a w does not 

figure as one of the leading characters." O'Connell sometimes ingeniously sustained the erroneous 
opinion that Burke was the writer of " Junius' s Letters." Byron was a great favorite with him, 
and he was a passionate admirer of Moore's Melodies. One evening during the repeal agitation, ai 
the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, he had Gansy, the famous piper, playing Scotch and Irish airs for 
his party. When one of Moore's Melodies would be played, O'Connell, at the conclusion, would 
repeat Moore's words. He also greatly liked Father Prout's ballad, "The Bells of Bhandon," 
which he got off by heart, declaring it (a slight exaggeration) to be the best ballad ever written. 
At Darrynane, O'Connell astonished a visitor, a " rough Northern lawyer," by his power of attend- 
ing to two or three intricate subjects at the same time; his memory, too. was something extraor- 
dinary. 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 485 



Shortly after emancipation we find O'Connell again in active political strife. In a letter " to th* 
people of Ireland " about that time he says : " I do not remember any period of my life in which 
bo much and such varied pains were taken to calumniate me, and I really think there never was a 
period in which the pretext for abusing me was so trivial. There seems to be a common accord 
among the enemies of Ireland to run me down if they can." His enemies were wrathful at seeing 
that, instead of sitting down content with emancipation and seeking office, he was determined still 
to struggle on for Ireland's rights. Accordingly, we hear of the Times hurling three hundred of its 
thunderbolts, in the shape of scurrilous articles, against him. Bravely he struggles against all foes. 
From Darrynane he is suddenly called to Cork, where he successfully defends the so-called Done- 
raile conspirators, tells Solicitor-General Dogherty that what he says is not law, and mocks his dan- 
dified accent to his face. In Parliament, his audacity and power force a hostile audience to admit 
his merit. He is applauded at meetings of English radicals. Like Napoleon before a campaign, he 
announces his designs — the numerous reforms he intends to seek. He has stirring times ; quarrels 
with friends and foes; has misunderstandings with O'Gorman Mahon and Major McNamara; en- 
counters in the House with Dogherty and Lord Leveson Gower, the latter of whom he calls " the 
shave-beggar." The stout soldier, Sir Henry Hardinge, he stings by calling him "the chance 
child of fortune and of war." If he had accepted the challenges of all those anxious to fight, he 
should have had at least a dozen lives. He denounces Anglesea's policy. In spite of the sup- 
pression of one society by government and the Leinster House declaration of the aristocracy against 
repeal, he founds another society called " Volunteers for the Repeal of the Union." Their break- 
fasts are suppressed and he is arrested, but the Algerine Act, under which the arrest tabes place, 
expires. In 1831 he helps the Whigs to carry the Reform Bill. In 1833, ten Irish bishoprics and 
church rates are abolished. He defends the tithe conspirators in the days of the tithe war; denounces 
and combats, inch by inch, "Scorpion" Stanley's coercion bill. He is great all through life at nick- 
names ; for example, " Spinning Jenny Peel," " Surface Peel," " Lord Mountgoose " {Spring Bice, 
Lord Monteagle). "Peter Piggery Purcell," the patron of agricultural shows. Wellington he called 
"a stunted corporal," Burdett, "a foolish and fading gentleman." " How stoutly," says a stranger 
to Mr. Daunt, "Dan fights it out among these English !" He calls the Dublin reporters, when they 
band against him, "a parcel of nibbling mice." "Do you call me a mouse?" demands the rene- 
gade Elrington. "No," retorts Dan, "if I called you anything, I should call you a rat." He 
even brings the London reporters, who garble his speeches, to reason, by moving their expulsion 
from the gallery of the House. 

In 1834 he is forced prematurely to bring the question of repeal before the House. Shiel and 
eccentric, half-mad Fergus O'Connor, afterwards leader of the English Chartists, support him. 
Peel, Spring Rice, Emmerson Tennant and others oppose him. Of course, repeal is defeated by a 
large majority. In 1835 he makes an engagement with the Whigs under Lord Melbourne and 
Lord John Russell, known in history as " the Litchfield House compact." Those Irish members, 
led by O'Connell, are nicknamed his "tail." He has great influence now in the disposal of Irish 
patronage. This is the period of the popular viceroyalty of Earl Mulgrave. The Whigs promise 
justice to Ireland, but the Lords defeat bills favorable to Ireland. O'Connell denounces them in 
the towns of England and Scotland ; calls Lord Alvanley a "bloated buffoon." Alvanley sends a 
message to Dan, who does not deign to notice him. Morgan O'Connell, however, obliges Alvanley 
by taking up his father's quarrel. The duellists exchange three shots without a hit. Benjamin 
Disraeli (not long since prime minister of England) next assailed Dan most wantonly, at Taunton; 
but Dan speedily gave him far more than he bargained for. He not merely calls Benjamin "a 
miscreant," whose life is "a living lie," "a disgrace to his species," but he insists that he is the de- 
fendant of "the impenitent thief," whose "qualities he possesses." Dan concludes his speed , amid 



486 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 



great laughter, with these words : " And with the impression that lie i», I now forgive the heir-at-law 
of the blasphemous thief who died upon the cross !" Is it any wonder that luckless Disraeli was 
almost frenzied '? He challenged Morgan O'Connell, who declined meeting him, to fight, and raved 
about "the inextinguishable hatred with which he should pursue O'Conuell's existence." 

Subsequently another Jew in race, named Raphael, gave O'Connell's agents £2000 for the ex- 
penses of his return for Carlow county. His election was declared illegal. He became clamoroua 
about his money. O'Connell, who was declared blameless in the matter by a committee of the Com- 
mons, felt himself constrained to denounce Raphael as "the most incomprehensible of all imagin- 
able vagabonds." 

'Twere long to tell all the curious quarrels, both with enemies and old associates, and t ;'ier inci- 
dents of O'Connell's life during the years between emancipation and the last repeal agitation. In 
1836, his beloved wife (beloved as few wives are loved) died at Darrynane. In 1838 he was 
hooted from a meeting and threatened with assassination for opposing the trades' unions and their 
exclusive apprentice laws. He was also reprimanded by the Commons, on the motion of Lord 
Maidstone, for having said at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, amid great cheering, "and reiterated 
in the House of Commons," that Ireland was nol safe from the perjury of English and Scotch 
members. O'Oouuell made no real retractation ; in the end he had far the best of this affair with 
the House. In 1838 the tithe-commutation bill passed. O'Connell opposed the Poor-Law 15111 
this year. 

O'Connell frequently wavered on the subject of repeal ; he often said he would be content if 
Ireland were put on a footing of equality with England. The Tories, while calling Catholic law- 
yers of far inferior talent to the inner bar, had meanly refused him his silk gown. But the Whigs 
had subsequently made him a king's counsel with a patent of precedence. However, he was always 
proof against the temptations of office. He refused this year the great position of lord chief baron. 
After his long trial of the Whigs, he founds the " Precursor Society." The Whigs, alarmed, pass the 
Irish corporate reform bill ; but ()'( lonnell is now determined to go on with the repeal agitation. In 
'41 he becomes lord-mayor of Dublin, acts with great impartiality in that office, ami in '42 revises 
the burgess roll. In this year he publishes his " Memoir of Inland" and his "Letter to the Earl 
of Shrewsbury,'' which the late Frederick Lucas considered his ablest literary effort Father 
Mathews tee-total movement had now been in existence for some time; O'Connell admired it and 
deemed it ancillary to repeal. In 184.'! the famous debate on repeal took place in the Dublin 
corporation. O'Connell, on this occasion, delivered one of his greatest orations. Isaac Butt, now 
the leader of the "home-rule movement," feebly opposed him. This was the great repeal year, 
Soon multitudinous repeal meetings took place all over the country; these were tin- "monster meet- 
ings," of which that at Tara and the one at Mullaghmast, where Hogan the sculptor crowned O'Con- 
nell, were the greatest. O'Connell sternly refused the contributions of American slaveholders. 
At Mallow he defied the government, who were now fast pouring troops into the island. But still 
he discountenanced French sympathizers. He also set bis face against the Chartists. The Nation 
newspaper was now tiring the youth of the country with eloquent articles and noble war-ballads. 
Its writer- also preached down pernicious sectarianism. Davis, Duffy, Dillon, Doheny, McNevin 
and others had formed "the Young Ireland party." Later, John Mitchel became the most conspictt- 
ous member of it. Father Kenyon and James Fintan Lalor also became prominent at a period later 
than '43. When, at length, O'Connell was cast into prison (the government, frightened at the vast 
meetings, their semi-warlike aspect, O'Connell's arbitration courts and the martial literature of 
"Young Ireland," had proclaimed the Clontarf meeting and arrested O'Connell and several others), 
at this crisis Smith O'Brien chivalrously joined the movement and became the leader of the " Young 
Ireland" section. O'Connell is now found guilty of conspiracy and .sentenced to a year's imprison- 



THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 487 

rnent, but he is let out on a writ of error in three months. This is in '44. The '82 Club is shortly 
after established ; nothing, however, comes of it. All along, too, the Convention Act has stood in 
the way of his favorite project of summoning a national council of three hundred. In '45 the 
generous and enlightened Davis, the thinker of the " Young Ireland party," dies prematurely. 
O'Connell is deeply grieved, though from the first he has mistrusted and feared the warlike tend- 
encies of that party. Now come misunderstandings on the education question between "Old" and 
" Young Ireland." The latter party are for mixed education ; finally the split takes place on the 
abstract principle mentioned at the commencement of this biography. Divisions have at length 
rent asunder the imposing might of the repeal cause. Narrow, sordid, poor-souled John O'Connell 
is the evil genius of his sire, who is now fast breaking down in mind and body. 

But in this fatal year, 1846, a dread national calamity is at hand. The potato crop fails a 
second time. Famine and pestilence are at the people's doors. O'Connell's jests and familiar 
speech are at an end for ever. Never again will he make his countrymen laugh by saying " Na- 
bocklish;" "Moryah;" "Thank you for nothing, says the gallipot;" "Stick a wisp of hay in that 
calf's mouth ;" " They accuse me of having promised the repeal in six months ; I did, and here 
I am again to promise it in six months more;" " This is a great day for Ireland," etc. The most 
jovial of men now at length bowed his head in Conciliation Hall and wept. He was powerless iu 
Dublin. He was powerless in London. His people died in thousands and in myriads, and numbers 
were buried without coffins. "The uncrowned king" becomes weak in body and his buoyant spirits 
desert him for ever. In 1847 he is ordered to a warmer climate. His old antagonist, Disraeli, 
in his life of Lord George Bentiuck, gives a touching picture of " the Liberator's " last appearance 
in the House of Commons — his feebleness of frame and voice as, for the last time, he besought aid 
for his hapless countrymen. As he passed through Paris, on his way to the city of the pontiff, he 
received the visits of the illustrious advocate Berryer and Count Montalembert. To the former 
he said, on welcoming him, "I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of pressing your hand." But he 
was unable to converse. To a Catholic society headed by the latter he said, in French, " Sickness 
and emotion close my lips. I should require the eloquence of your president to express to you all 
my gratitude." Mr. J. P. Leonard, who was continually with him during his stay in Paris, has 
recently sent me, from that city, a short but most interesting sketch, entitled " O'Connell in Paris," 
which I regret I did not receive earlier, so that I might have reserved space for its insertion in this 
biography. He says that even then, in the expression of O'Connell's "gray eyes, there was a power 
that dazzled, attracted and awed — a something that once seen could never be forgotten " Like most 
great men in a dying state, he disliked to confess weakness. His drive from the railway terminus 
had fatigued him. A "young priest brought cushions to prop him up and make him more com- 
fortable, but he declined the offer rather roughly, saying, ' I have no need of those things, I assure 
you.' He still wore the repeal cap and button, and a long green coat with pockets cut at each 
side. He looked thoughtful and sad." Mr. Leonard also says that there " was no apparent cause 
for his speedy dissolution ; medical skill could discern no organic affection." The state of his 
mind was preying on his existence. " He left Paris with a sad heart, hopeless of the future." To 
his admirers there the news of his death could bring no surprise. In Lyons, Professor Bonnet 
thought congestion of the brain had set in. " The illustrious patient's mind was clear, but not 
active, and it was a continual prey to sad reflections." His figure had so shrunk that he said, " I 
am but the shadow of what I was, and I can scarcely recognize myself." He had now a presenti- 
ment of fast-coming death. His right hand trembled ; his left hand and left foot were cold. His 
step was faltering. Masses were said for him in all the churches of Lyons. Anxious inquirers 
besieged his hotel. Everywhere the deepest veneration was shown for "the great liberator of Ire- 
land." As he passed from the hotel to the steamboat, crowds in the streets of Lyons uncovered 



488 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 



and bowed before him. But he took no notice of them. He no longer felt any interest in earthly 
honors. He had already said to one who tried to cheer him, "Do not deceive yourself; I may not 
live three days." The fatal disease was softening of the brain. On his voyage down the river Shone 
he seemed for a moment to revive under the genial warmth of the southern sun. News that he was 
recovering reached Dublin. But the hopes thus raised were illusory and fleeting. The last scene 
took place in "Genoa the Proud." On the 15th of May, 1847, at three in the afternoon, he called 
his valet and thanked him for his faithful services. That evening he breathed his last, in his 
seventy-second year. He had vaiuly desired to live till he could reach Koine and receive the 
pontiff's blessing. Not long before he expired, after being motionless for hours, he had sat up and 
said, in a hollow voice, "I shall have the appearance of death before life is really departed. You 
must take care not to bury me until quite sure that I am dead." His friends looked on awestruck. 
His youngest son, Daniel, and Father Miley, who were with him when he died, in compliance with 
his request, brought his heart to Rome. Pius the Ninth embraced his sou: "Since," said His 
Holiness, "the pleasure of seeing and embracing the hero of Catholicity was not reserved for me, 
let me have the consolation of embracing his son." Grand funeral solemnities were observed in 
Genoa and Rome. In Ireland his funeral was a vast and imposing spectacle. His poor son John 
refused to allow the "Young Irelanders" to take part in it. Funeral orations were delivered in 
his praise by the greatest preachers of Italy and France — Fathers Ventura and Lacordaire. 
Father Miley preached his funeral sermon in Dublin. A round tower has been erected t« his 
memory in Glasnevin Cemetery, near that city. 

Such were the life and death of Daniel O'Connell — a man of majestic form, large of heart, and 
of colossal intellect. His character, like the grand scenery of his native mountains, was irregular 
and full of startling contrasts. He was good-natured, yet irritable; now courteous and compliment- 
ary, now vituperative to excess. Generous, even at times forgiving and magnanimous, he was yet 
capable of nursing vindictive passions. While he doated ou his wife and children, he is said to have 
not unfrequently forgotten his marriage vows. He sought after money eagerly, yet his "liberal hand 
and open heart" scattered it again profusely. He had the moral courage of a statesman and was 
personally brave in the face of physical danger, but he lacked the peculiar enterprise of the mil- 
itary character. He was defiant, yet capable of submission. He removed badges of ignominy 
from the Irish race, but the results of his policy were in many respects injurious to their fortunes. 
He longed for the independence of Ireland, yet in the end drew aside the national efforts into 
wrong paths. He inspired the people with courage to face their enemies, yet, if we are to believe 
some generally sound thinkers, he taught them to like political dodging. When he died, the 
masses of his people were most miserable. In the long run, however, good will certainly accrue 
from his career. He was one of the greatest popular orators that ever lived, but also one of the 
most unfinished. His voice was in the highest degree seductive, in spite of the broadest Kerry 
brogue. His inimitable humor and fun sometimes degenerated into arrant buffoonery. He found 
it hard to keep his exuberant animal spirits within reasonable bounds. He was, at times, frank, 
outspoken, imprudent even to rashness, but more frequently cautious. A man of impulse, yet 
proue to deliberate. A sincere believer in revelation, yet hardly pious. Grand of soul, but occa- 
fcio lally descending to littlenesses. In fine, Irish to the heart's core, and, with all his faults, th« 
greatest of Irish political leaders.* 



* Mr. Pumell was not a factor in Irish Politics at the time when this sketch was written ; as a matter of fact 
he was then an infant. — It. F. W. 



Preliminary Sketch of Irish History. 



Preliminary Sketch of Irish History. 



Relations of Ireland to England the source of Irish misery — Independence neces- 
sary to Ireland's happiness — Aims of O'Connell's life — How far he succeeded — 
Where he failed, and why — Exaggeration of his theory of moral force — Ire- 
land's capabilities — Rapid survey of Irish history down to the year 1775. 







! T is now more than seven hundred years since the day on which 
English invaders first set foot upon the soil of Ireland. Ever 
since that fatal event Ireland has been more or less subject to 
the yoke of England, and more or less miserable. At times, 
indeed, she has been regarded, equally by friend and foe, as the 
most unfortunate island of the sea, though, from the gifts lavished 
alike on her soil and people by the bounteous hand of Nature, she might 
be reasonably expected to prove the most fortunate. And wretched 
her destiny must ever remain while her connection with England lasts. 
There are many who ask, Why must this be so ? Does she not share 
the benefits of the glorious and envied constitution of Britain ? Is she 
not represented in the British legislature ? Are not the Irish people, in 
short, now part and parcel of the great British nation — participators in 
all the blessings of British law and British justice ? Most Englishmen, 
and Irishmen of the "West-British stamp, would fain answer these ques- 
tions in the affirmative ; but the views of all such on " the Irish ques- 
tion " are entirely fallacious. If, indeed, the Irish were really one people 
with the English — similar in race, feeling, character, traditions and 
interests — the present connection with England would ensure their hap- 
piness. With or without members in the British legislature, Ireland 
would, in this case, see her interests cared for, would be virtually repre- 



492 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

sented. The representatives of Shropshire and Sussex would be as solici- 
tous about the honor and interests of Tyrone and Tipperary as about 
those of Durham and Dorset, or even their own. But the two nations — 
not being homogeneous ; on the contrary, differing widely in race, feel- 
ing, character, traditions and interests — are altogether incapable of 
amalgamation. The representation of the weaker in the united legisla- 
ture must ever be a delusion and a sham. Even if Ireland had an 
equal number of representatives with England (and this she could not 
reasonably claim), England, being wealthier and more powerful, would 
have the advantage in various ways. But Ireland having, as a matter 
of course, only a small minority in the united legislature, it necessarily 
follows that, whenever a conflict of interests takes place between the two 
countries, her representatives must be swamped and her interests must 
go the wall. This would be inevitable if Irish members of Parliament 
were all as incorruptible as Aristides. But it is hardly necessary to 
point out the facilities England possesses for corrupting Irish members 
of Parliament; and her desire to corrupt equals her ability. 

Some, indeed, there are who argue that if a democratic republic were 
proclaimed in tin.' British islands, it would no longer be necessary for the 
Irish people to seek even the restoration of their separate Legislature. 
The representatives of tin' English democracy would at length give tardy 
justice to Ireland. No more thorough fallacy than this was ever uttered. 
A democratic government and Legislature may be just ami beneficent to 
their own people, but to a subject nation, or to a population whose 
interests differ from those of their own immediate countrymen, they are 
sure to be unjust and tyrannical. If the principle be true that men are 
seldom or never just judges in their own case, a democracy or sovereign 
people will always trample under foot whatever interests come in collision 
with its own. An odd indivividual may judge justly in his own cause 
aggregates of men can hardly ever do so. Indeed, political philosophers 
have maintained that the rule of an absolute monarch may be more 
likely to render justice to a subject province than that of ;i democratic 
government. If the despot be a tyrant, he will, at least, tyrannize impar- 
tiali. 3ver all lands under his sway. If, on the other hand, he should 
chance, like Trajan and a few others, to be a father of his people, the 
blessings of his paternal rule will shine on all his provinces alike; tor 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OE IRISH HISTORY. 493 

his interest and glory are augmented by the prosperity of every part of 
his empire. 

In truth, Ireland, being a distinct nation, can never be happy or pros- 
perous while her connection with England subsists. No matter what 
the form of government common to the two countries may be — whether 
monarchical, aristocratical or democratic — Ireland, bound to England, 
must always be miserable and inglorious ; living "from hand to mouth 
by temporary shifts and expedients ; the beggar of nations ; the scorn 
of the civilized world. To enjoy the full advantage of her teeming re- 
sources, the riches of her soil and the various gifts of her people, Ireland 
must cast her connection with England to the winds and once more take 
her place among the free nations of the earth. 

Through the whole of his long career, Daniel O'Connell, the marvel- 
ous and instructive story of whose active and varied life I am about to 
narrate, was manifestly actuated by a strong conviction of the truth of 
the principles which I have been endeavoring to enunciate. Setting aside 
for the present all his lesser aims, this illustrious Irishman, from the be- 
ginning to the end of his public life, kept three grand objects constantly 
in view: 1st. He desired to emancipate his co-religionists of the 
Catholic faith, and also the dissenting Protestants, from the civil dis- 
abilities that oppressed and degraded them ; in other words, he sought 
to win religious liberty for the vast majority of the Irish people and 
even for the minority of the English and Scotch. 2d. He aimed at 
uniting Irishmen of all races and religions into one strong nation. 
But, 3d, His greatest and noblest ambition was to regain the legislative 
independence of his country — to make Ireland a free nation once 
again. 

He succeeded in accomplishing the first of these objects. The method 
by which he conquered was original. Instead of resorting to arms and 
overthrowing his opponents in the field, he assembled his countrymen 
in vast public meetings, and brought an immense pressure of public 
opinion to bear on the hostile government and legislature. But let us 
bear in mind that ever and anon, behind this peaceful array of popular 
might, was heard the half-uttered menace of war. If, by a delay of 
redress of grievances, the patience of the oppressed were at length 
worn out. why then the people could and would strike. Amid all 



494 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



O'Connell's pacific protestations and professions of loyalty, ominous 
words of this sort continually startled his opponents — so much so that 
when finally yielding to the demands of the great agitator, the duke irf 
Wellington frankly admitted that he only conceded emancipation to 
avoid the inevitable alternative of civil war. When I come to relate 
the story of emancipation in detail, I may suggest to the reader some 
doubts, at least, as to whether it were not, after all, a misfortune for 
Ireland that the British government yielded emancipation quietly. In 
truth, if the Irish people had been obliged to fight for it, some evil con- 
sequences, that have resulted from the way in which emancipation was 
achieved, might have been avoided, and the benefits springing from the 
national victory would in all probability have been fax wider in their 
scope, more ennobling and more durable. 

O'Connell met with only partial success in his endeavors to unite 
all the various jarring elements of the Irish nation. But in his efforts 
to achieve the third and noblest object of his ambition he failed com- 
pletely. After a vast and imposing display, continuing for months, of 
multitudinous popular masses and of the marvelous dominion, which 
his transcendent abilities had given him over the popular mind, the 
seeming might of the repeal movement gradually dwindled away, and, 
at last, the whole organization dissolved into thin air "like the baseless 
fabric of a vision;'* while the aged chieftain, broken alike in health and 
heart and power, retired to a foreign land to die. 

And this failure could not be otherwise, seeing the means adopted by 
O'Connell to achieve his end. His early triumphs, which were won by 
agitation, caused him to push his theory of "moral tout'" (to use his 
own term) to the utmost pitch of exaggeration. If England conceded 
emancipation peacefully, it was because it really took no power from 
her; it simply brought the Catholics within the pale of the Constitu- 
tion; perhaps, in certain ways, it rather increased England's power. 
Besides, a rich and influential portion of the English people participated 
in the struggle. In the reform agitation the majority of the people of 
England, Scotland and Ireland united in demanding a reform bill from 
the government. But the ease of repeal was altogether different This 
was an international question. England was asked to surrender her 
dominion over Ireland. Power is seldom or never yielded save to force. 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IKISH HISTORY. 495 

And what force, adequate to the task of wresting the legislative inde- 
pendence of Ireland from England, could be found in the mere expres- 
sion of the public opinion of trampled Ireland ? No portion of the Eng- 
lish people would help to strengthen this array of Irish public opinion 
so as to bring the requisite pressure on the hostile majority in parlia- 
ment. The English populace, supposing they had possessed the power 
would have served themselves at the expense of Ireland, and, perhaps, 
trampled on her rights even more readily than the English aristocracy 
or middle classes. Besides, toward the close of the agitation for repeal, 
O'Connell brought forward an abstract proposition which, acted on in 
good faith, should necessarily deprive the " agitation " system of the only 
force it ever had — that of the threat held in reserve. The proposition 
was to the effect, "that, under no circumstances, would an oppressed 
nation be justified in resorting to arms against the oppressor unless 
first attacked." In short, the Irish people, naturally one of the most 
martial upon God's earth, were called upon to swallow the monstrous 
and even laughable delusion that England could be induced by mere 
force of reason and persuasion to give up her hold on Ireland. If the 
Irish people could possibly have come to believe and act on this princi- 
ple, Hie British government need only avoid attacking and they might 
continue oppressing the Irish to the end of time. His determination to 
act on this exaggerated theory of "moral force" blighted the closing 
scenes of O'Connell's career and ruined the cause of Ireland for the 
time — so much so that we must hesitate whether, upon the whole, we 
should deem the life of this most illustrious of all Irish political leaders a 
success or a failure. In truth, in the history of this "moral-force" delu- 
sion are to be found the saddest, but not the least instructive, lessons 
of his extraordinary life ; the chief moral to be derived from which is, 
that Ireland, to be happy, must be independent, and that to be inde- 
pendent she must place her sole trust in the God of battles and her 
own manhood marshaled in the field ! 

Nor can any one reasonably doubt or deny that Ireland has all the 
elements requisite to form an important independent state. Indeed, few 
countries are more richly endowed by nature than Ireland with the ele- 
ments of prosperity and even greatness. She boasts, in the first place, 
the excellence of her geographical position, so admirably fitted for com- 



496 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



mercial purposes. Indeed, if it be true that nothing in creation exists 
without design, this position of Ireland would seem to indicate that 
future generations of Irishmen are destined to a career of commercial 
activity and greatness. Her situation, placed as she is between the Old 
World and the New, is one which, like that of Egypt, must remain, for all 
coming time, in the highest degree adapted for commerce. Ireland is 
not, in this respect, at the mercy of circumstances, like Venice, whose 
maritime greatness declined after the discovery of the passage by the 
Cape of Good Hope. Surely this fortunate position was not given to us 
in vain. 

Perhaps, if we duly consider the peculiarity of her geographical 
position, we may be enabled to see why greatness has hitherto been 
denied to Ireland. Had Ireland become great prior to the discovery and 
colonization of America, and the subsequent growth of the numerous 
transatlantic States to maturity, she could have derived no especial 
profit or advantage from her geographical position, and thus her great- 
ness would have been imperfect. 

The case to-day is very different. The western world is now full of 
civilized and powerful States. Ireland might now reap the full advan- 
tages of her geographical position. 

But Ireland has numerous other advantages. She boasts her splen- 
did harbors, unequaled by those of most other lands ; her noble rivers ; 
a favorable climate ; a fertile soil ; scenery of the most varied loveliness ; 
a vast amount of unemployed resources ; but, above all, she boasts the 
possession of a hardy population, naturally brave, generous, adven- 
turous and energetic, gifted with an intelligence of no common order. 
Indeed, it is impossible for an unprejudiced person to have much inter- 
course with the Irish, and not to perceive that they are a people singu- 
larly gifted by nature. The variety and rapid succession of their ideas, 
their apparent fertility of resources, their readiness of wit, their genial 
humor, their vivacity of imagination and their facility of expression can- 
not but strike the most superficial observer. It is no exaggeration to 
say that the most educated mind might occasionally derive valuable 
hints and suggestions from the conversation of an Irish peasant, prompted 
only by his shrewd native intelligence or mother-wit, Viewing this 
happy combination of natural advantages with which Ireland is blessed, 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 497 

it is hardly rash to infer that a just Providence has destined her, come 
when it will, for a career of unexampled glory and good fortune ; though, 
up to the present, all her blessings have been turned to no account, and 
the contrast between the brilliant gifts of Ireland and her people and the 
misery of their fate be one of the most singular and unaccountable in all 
history. 

I shall not waste much time in endeavoring to refute the opinion of 
those who think, or pretend to think, that Ireland would, under no cir 
cumstances, be able to win her independence. The question, Whethei 
Ireland be able to throw off the yoke of England ? has been discussed 
over and over usque ad nauseam. From the days of Tone and Emmet to 
those of Davis and O'Brien, and even to the present time, numbers o* 
Irish patriotic writers of the greatest ability have shown conclusive!'' 
that the idea of regaining our independence, so far from being chimeri- 
cal, is in reality the only practical idea for Irishmen to entertain, if they 
wish to make their country what she ought to be — prosperous, happy and 
renowned. In connection with this subject I shall only make three 
additional observations : 

1st. Ireland is still, after all the drain of emigration (such is the 
recuperative power of the Irish race), relatively one of the most popu- 
lous countries in the world. Absolutely, she is still more populous than 
the following independent states of Europe — Belgium, Holland, Den- 
mark, Greece, including the Ionian isles, Portugal, Switzerland, and 
Sweden and Norway taken together. I omit mentioning some European 
countries not independent; also many barbarous or semi-barbarous 
states in Asia and Africa. As in population, so in superficial extent, 
Ireland exceeds all the states I have mentioned, save the kingdoms of 
Sweden and Norway, and perhaps Portugal. She is even nearly a fourth 
larger than Holland and Belgium taken together. 

2d. I shall shortly observe that, even to the most careless and super- 
ficial of historical students, from numerous examples of past history, the 
broad general principle must be manifest, that nations of less extent 
than Ireland, or less populous, or both, when fired by patriotic enthu- 
siasm, can resist the might of colossal empires and wrest from them, not 
merely privileges and rights more or less important, but even inde- 
pendence itself. 



498 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

3d. It is hardly necessary to add that, if Ireland once succeeded in 
achieving her independence, she could have no difficulty in maintaining 
it permanently. When Prussia, in the last century, under Frederick the 
Great, bore up, for the most part single-handed, against all continental 
Europe, and not merely maintained her independence, but held fast her 
conquests in an iron gripe, her population and resources were as nothing 
compared to what an independent Ireland would have ; and the configu- 
ration of Prussia, so far from being, like that of Ireland, favorable for 
defensive purposes, is precisely the reverse. 

In order to enable the reader to grasp the full significance of his 
career, I deem it necessary, before I commence the biography of Daniel 
O'Connell, to take a rapid survey of some of the principal features of 
Irish history from the earliest period, but more especially from the Eng- 
lish invasion, in the twelfth century, to the year 1775 — the year when 
O'Connell was born. Once, however, I commence the biography prop- 
erly so called, reflection and disquisition must give way to narrative 
As far as it may be practicable, I shall make O'Connell tell his own tale, 
and, for the most part, leave the reader to draw from the story his own 
moral. 

Nearly all writers agree that the great curse of Ireland, in every age, 
has been her disunion. Long before the Anglo-Norman invasion, even 
before the Danish invasions, while Ireland was yet untrodden by the 
foot of hostile stranger, her people were rent asunder and weakened by 
intestine strife. The ard-righ (supreme monarch) was generally at war 
with one or more of his rebellious tributary chieftains. The chieftains, 
when not in rebellion against the ard-righ, were fighting with each 
other and devastating each other's lands. The history of Ireland for 
centuries is a history of endless predatory incursions of tribe against 
tribe, continual aggressions and continual retaliations. The ard-righ 
so far from laboring, on all occasions, to suppress this internecine strife, 
was himself frequently the chief promoter of discord. So hopelessly 
unsettled was the state of society, so devoid were the chiefs and people 
of just notions of subordination and government, of obedience in ex- 
change for protection, of the necessity, for the general weal, of uniformly 
supporting the ruler out of the national resources, that it is possible the 
supreme monarchs came, at length, to view it as a matter of interest. 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 499 

and even absolute necessity, to wring, by the strong hand, whatever 
they could from their insolent and lawless tributaries. Indeed, it is 
hard to explain the reigns of many of these mdnarchs on any rational 
principle. A king succeeds to the throne by murdering his predecessor. 
Issuing from Meath (or whichever territory may be his immediate patri- 
mony), he successively invades all the other provinces; plunders and 
ravages Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught impartially ; fights a 
number of battles ruinous to the interests of the whole country, and, 
from every rational point of view, utterly inglorious. He occasionally 
gives a little variety to a career of slaughter by robbing and burning a 
few churches. His death is in keeping with his life. He is either 
knocked on the head in battle, or is else assassinated by the prince 
destined to succeed him, who is the son of his murdered predecessor and 
the representative of the second branch of the royal race. This prince, 
in his turn, goes through a similar career of slaughter and sacrilege, to 
meet a similar fate. This picture can hardly be called an overcharged 
one. Long periods of the history of Ireland, prior to the English inva- 
lior., present little more than a monotonous and dreary repetition of this 
tale of murder, battle and wholesale plunder. Sometimes it requires a 
considerable effort of the imagination to understand how any rational 
being could consent to assume the unquiet, thankless, fatal office of ard- 
righ of Ireland. But, after all, man seeks, at any cost, even the shadow 
of supreme dignity ; and, once he becomes familiarized with them, he is 
easily reconciled to almost any circumstances or condition of life; he 
even manages to find himself at home and indifferent in prison or amid 
pestilence. Perhaps our ancient princes came gradually to view a vio- 
lent death as the natural close of an Irish king's career. Be this as it 
may, few of them died in their beds. When not murdered or killed in 
battle, these peculiarly unlucky sovereigns were almost sure to be 
drowned or to meet their deaths in some other accidental way. It is 
perhaps somewhat touching to read that, among the small minority 
who escaped violent deaths, a few, wearied out by their violent lives, 
sought, in their latter days, quiet, and rest, and reconciliation with theii 
God in the seclusion of the cloister. 

In truth, even to a very recent period the Irish people have seldom 
or never been able to grasp in their minds the large idea of a united 



500 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

Irish nation. The want of this broad and comprehensive idea is at the 
root of all their misfortunes, both of ancient and modern date. Though 
the patriarchal clan system of our forefathers was more or less suitable 
to a primitive age ; though, looking at its poetic side, the life and 
manners it developed were more or less genial and picturesque ; though 
many of the kings and clan chieftains, however tierce and rugged, were, 
at least, genuine men, fit for their time, stout, manly and true, — yet, in 
spite of these bright and attractive features, it had, among many other 
serious defects, the ruinous one of a perpetual tendency to break up the 
nation into smaller and smaller fragments. It was generally easy 
enough for one of the younger scions of a chieftain's house, if aspiring 
and energetic, to gather around him a portion of the clan and set up on 
his own account a chieftaincy more or less independent. Thus all 
cohesion was nearly at an end. Nor did even the presence of a common 
enemy on their soil suffice to band the Irish people in a common strug- 
gle for freedom, either when the Danes or the Anglo-Normans invaded 
their country. Properly speaking, indeed, one can scarcely say that an 
Irish people existed in the days we speak of, for each clan hardly looked 
beyond the narrow compass of what it deemed its own immediate inter- 
ests. Hence the tribes hardly ever scrupled to form alliances with the 
stranger against their own countrymen, if only they fancied they could 
profit themselves by so doing. They seemed to regard the foreigners 
merely in the light of an additional clan with which they might, from 
time to time, have to join battle or strike up a league. Occasionally we 
find even the supreme monarch joining, without any apparent hesita- 
tion, in an alliance with the Danes against his tributary chieftains and 
their clans. 

No doubt the histoiy of various other countries, in many periods, has 
been disfigured by the frequent occurrence of scenes of internal discord ; 
but. nevertheless, it maybe doubted if, anywhere, disunion and domestic 
strife occurred incessantly as in Ireland. One is tempted to regret that 
the Romans, in their ages of victory and conquest, did not come to 
Innisfail and subdue it like the rest of Europe. A conquest by the 
Romans, consolidated in their usual fashion, would, at least, have abol- 
ished the independent jurisdiction of the chiefs and the almost separate 
existence of the clans. Even if the Danes had succeeded in completely 



PRELIMINAEY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 501 

subjugating the island and establishing a Danish dynasty on the Irish 
throne, a similar unification would have been brought about, and the 
fortunes of Ireland might have turned out better. Lord Lyttleton, in 
his history of Henry II., suggests that in this case Ireland might have 
proved a formidable commercial rival to England. Doubtless the effects 
of such a conquest would, at the worst, have been far less disastrous 
than those which have resulted from the Anglo-Norman yoke. As the 
conquerors, or their immediate posterity, at all events, would inevitably 
have ceased to own allegiance to the distant realms of Scandinavia, 
Ireland would at least have enjoyed a separate existence. 

Lest I may be thought by some to have exaggerated in these 
general statements the extent of the disunion that prevailed among 
our forefathers, I shall here give, as concisely as I can, a few in- 
stances in support of my assertions, which will be found to apply 
equally to the semi-mythical as to the authentic portions of our 
history. To begin with the more ancient and dubious periods-, we 
may read in one place of eight successive kings, each gaining the 
throne by the murder of his predecessor, and, a little after, of thirteen 
monarchs in succession meeting violent deaths. Coming down to 
Ugony the Great, we find that after a long and victorious reign of forty 
years he was slain by Badblihchadh. He, in turn, was immediately 
slain by Laeghaire Lore, the son of Ugony. Again, Laeghaire Lore was 
slain two years after, at Wexford, by Cobthach Cael Breagh. The reign 
of this latter prince was long, but finally he was defeated and killed 
near Leighlin bridge, on the west bank of the Barrow. His conqueror, 
Labraidh Loingseach, a celebrated hero of tradition, succeeded, but he, 
too, was slain ; and the fate of his five immediate successors was similar. 
The next king, Connla the Comely, was peculiarly lucky, for he man- 
aged to die in his bed, in the old seat of Milesian royalty, Tara, after 
ruigning twenty years. He did not, however, transmit his luck to his 
four immediate successors, who all met violent deaths. Another fortu- 
nate prince succeeded, Aengus by name, who reigned long and died 
quietly in Tara. His four successors also were slain. Then Eory the 
Great reigned long and died a natural death. But his six successors 
perished by the sword ! 

Passing over a long period, during which the throne is generally won 



502 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

by some deed of violence, and during which few kings die in their beds — 
passing over the strange story of a revolution which is said for a time 
to have given the mastery of the island to a serf- race, called the Atta- 
cotti, and in the course of which the Milesian nobility are said to have 
been almost exterminated — passing over, too, the great hero of legendary 
tradition, Conn of the hundred battles, who had the usual fate of an 
Irish king, having been treacherously slain, and a long line of his suc- 
cessors, who, if they did not lose their lives in battle, by poison, drown- 
ing, a stroke of lightning (this was the fate of Dathy in the Alps) or 
some other accidental death, fell by the hand of treachery, like himself — 
hurrying over the scenes and events of the remoter ages, — we arrive at 
the era of Christianity, after which Irish history gradually becomes more 
authentic. 

The life of St. Patrick extends over the latter part of the fourth cen- 
tury and the greater portion of the fifth. His apostleship in Ireland 
commenced about the year of our Lord 432, in the reign of King Leagh- 
aire, and lie died toward the end of the fifth century, at an extreme old 
age. His lite was one of singular sanctity and of extraordinary labors 
for the conversion of the Irish people, nearly all of which were crowned 
with success the most complete and glorious. There is one peculiarity 
about the religious revolution winch this saint brought about. Strange 
to say, considering the tierce and stormy scenes and events of our secu- 
lar history, from beginning to end it was altogether peaceful in its prog- 
ress. Singular contrast ! but so it was. In the early stages of the 
saint's mission, when his followers were but few, the pagans made no 
attempt to persecute the scanty band of Christians. Nor, when the 
Christians triumphed and in their turn rose to power, did they make 
the least attempt to root out the remnant of the pagans by violence, but 
trusted for their eventual conversion to mildness and persuasion. Ire- 
land, indeed, is one of the few countries (1 had almost said the only one;) 
that received Christianity peacefully. An unique glory this! Wha1 a 
wonderful contrast between the introduction of Christianity into pagan 
Ireland and its early struggles in pagan Koine, where not merely em- 
perors, who were human monsters, like Nero, but good rulers, like Tra- 
jan and wise ones, like Diocletian, tried the Church with no less than 
ten fiery persecutions. This absence of burnings, tortures, massacres, 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 503 



on the part either of the pagans or Christians, during the conversion of 
the Irish, reflects equal honor on saint and people. The whole aspect 
of the revolution and its results show clearly what mildness, amiability, 
temper, tact, judgment, persuasive power and goodness of every kind St. 
Patrick must have possessed, otherwise he could never have prevailed 
over so many fierce and haughty princes and their warlike people so 
easily. Doubtless the old Druidical paganism must have been well- 
nigh worn out. Doubtless, too, the patriarchal chiefs once won over, 
their clansmen or children would be likely to follow their example. 
Still the difficulties were great; and these difficulties were vastly en- 
hanced by the fact that the Irish were a peculiar and primitive people, 
totally ignorant of the Eoman customs, language and letters, to which 
St. Patrick and his followers were used from their birth. The calm 
nature of the revolution proves also that, however unfortunate circum- 
stances came to render the history of Ireland a long series of scenes of 
turbulence and disorder, too often red with the blood of mutually- 
destroying kinsmen, still the character of the Irish people was at bot- 
tom amiable and good-hearted. The late Count de Montalembert, in 
the very interesting life of our countryman, Saint Columbanus, the great 
restorer of religious purity in France, given in his admirable work, " The 
Monks of the West," dwells with the warmest praise on the purity im- 
planted in the Irish character by the teachings of the venerable Gaulish 
apostle. He calls it a purity unparalleled in other nations. He dwells 
on the fact that this primitive purity of manners, so deeply rooted in tbe 
souls of the Irish, has, along with their incomparable faith, been preserved 
unstained from the time of St. Patrick to the present day, aad this 
through the most terrible trials of fire and sword. How deeply im- 
planted must have been the saint's teachings ! Is it any marvel that 
his name and memory are still as freshly cherished as ever in the heart 
and on the lips of the Irish people ? The simple, straightforward, 
earnest men of the early ages are the heroes that live longest in the 
popular mind of nations. Even mythical beings of the hoary traditions 
of eld are loved as real men, for they, at least, represent earnest and 
heroic ideas, and even deeds. When the names of numberless highly- 
vaunted heroes of the more artificial periods, of whose lives volumes of 
minute detail have been written, sound in men's ears only as faint and 



504 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

far-off echoes of a forgotten past, the name of St. Patrick, of whose life 
few details in comparison are known, will still exercise over the Irish 
race the potent influences of a spell. 

Count de Montalembert dwells also on the missionary impulse given 
to the Irish by St. Patrick's teachings — an impulse which remained in 
full vigor for more than a century. In truth, during this time Ireland 
was the abode of learning and the most famous school of learned mis- 
sionaries. One would expect to find the whole history of the people 
assuming a milder aspect, but the facts disappoint all such expectation. 
Unhappily, the old strife and disorder continue in spite of advancing 
arts and learning. And it is curious that the learning and the arts 
were able to exist and struggle on in spite of the strife and the disorder. 

During the life of St. Patrick, King Oilioll Molt, the son of Dathy 
and successor of Leaghaire, was slain at the battle of Olha, in Meath, 
by Lughaidh, the son of Leaghaire, who then mounted the throne. II 
was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Lughaidh that the saint died. 
Like Dathy, this prince was killed by a flash of lightning. The next 
prince was burned to death, and several successive monarchs also per- 
ished by violent deaths. Such was the uniform aspect of the history 
of Ireland in the years that followed the introduction of Christianity, in 
spite of its humanizing influences, and such our history continued down 
to the ninth century. Two or three kings may have died in their beds. 
Nial Frosach dies a monk in Iona. Flaithbheartach also wearies of the 
rough career of king, and seeks the quiet of monastic life at Armagh. 
But nearly all are slain. Of course we have any amount of internecine 
raids and combats. We hear of O'Neills ravaging Leinstcr five limes 
in one year. Ard-righ Congall makes a raid, on a large scale, on his 
tributaries of Leinstcr, and paternally exacts tribute and spoil from 
them; he also defeats his liegeman of Cinel Eoghain. Ard-righ Aedh 
Allan vanquishes the Ulidians and kills their prince at Faughard, in 
Louth. He crushes Leinstcr in the great battle of Ballyshannon, not 
far from Kilcullen, in Kildare county. His forces kill, they say. 
9000 Leinstcr men ; he himself slays in single combat the son of bis 
tributary, the king of Leinstcr. Finally, Aedh Allan loses life and 
crown in a battle at Kells. Another paternal ard-righ, Donchad, the 
son of Domhnall, ravages Leinstcr and Minister, one after the other, 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY 505 



with fire and sword, and also favors the midland and northern districts 
with predatory incursions. This fortunate prince contrives, however, to 
reign twenty-seven years, and to die, at the sufficiently ripe age of sixty- 
four, in the odor of sanctity. Such were events till the close of the 
eighth or beginning of the ninth century. By this time hordes of Scan- 
dinavian pirates had begun to visit our shores, and of course matters 
grew infinitely worse, for the Danes, wherever they came, ravaged with- 
out mercy, sparing neither sex nor age, and the Irish, weakened and 
worn-out by domestic strife and disorders, were hardly in a condition to 
repel invaders. 

During the calamitous period of the Danish invasions learning and 
the arts, as was only natural, began to decline. The pictures presented 
by our annals grow blacker at every page. The Danes make sudden 
descents, and plunder monasteries, shrines, churches. They commit 
wanton massacres without ruth. Tet Irish chiefs, for selfish ends, 
repeatedly join with them against their countrymen, and sometimes 
e\ en rival them in pillaging churches. Such a one was Cineadh, lord 
of Cianachta-Breagh. He, aided by these sea-rovers, rose against King 
Malachy, in 848, and robbed the churches and ravaged the lands of the 
Hy-Mall from the Shannon to the sea. Next year, however, he met 
with fitting poetic justice, for he was drowned in the Nanny, a small 
river of Meath that flowed through his own land, by the followers of 
the king. We find even supreme monarchs, during this gloomy time, 
instead of trying to band their people against the stranger, still warring 
against and wasting their tributaries. Thus, in 804, King Aedh Oir- 
nidhe devastates Leinster twice in one month. In 815 he overran 
Meath and Ulidia, and again invaded Leinster. It may be here 
remarked that not till this prince's reign were Irish ecclesiastics 
exempted from miltary service in these predatory hostings. Flan Sinna, 
another ard-righ, and apparently a prince not without high and gener- 
ous qualities, was not even content with plundering his tributaries ; he 
went so far as to join the foreigners in ravaging expeditions against 
Munster and the North. Battles, massacres, burnings, maraudings and 
sacrilege fill the picture of the times. Learning, indeed, though declin- 
ing fast, sometimes tried to rally. It was in the year 908 that Corinac 
Mac Cuileannan, the learned and good though rash king and bishop 



500 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

of Minister, unfortunately perished in one of those miserable scenes of 
internecine strife. 

Doubtless the supreme kings were not always to blame for these 
attacks on their tributaries. They were often provoked by insubordina- 
tion. And, at all events, it should not be forgotten that several princes 
endeavored to do their duty in these dark times more or less success- 
fully. 

The Danes were wholly unable to effect a thorough or permanent 
conquest of the island. The names of Malachy, in the ninth century, 
and, above all, of the magnanimous Muircheartach Mac Neill, prince of 
Aileach and heir-elect to the ard-righ Donchad, in the tenth, deserve 
to be held in honorable recollection. The former regained or saved the 
independence of the country ; the latter endeavored to subdue the North- 
men and their provincial allies. He seemed to have some idea of an 
Ireland presenting a united front to the foreigner. He also gave an 
example of subordination (the thing most wanted in Ireland) by being 
loyal to the weak ard-righ Donchad. Unfortunately, the virtues of this 
generous, gallant and large-souled prince brought him no superior for- 
tune, for on the 20th of March, 943, he was slain at Ardee, by Blacaire, 
son of Godfrey, king of the invaders. 

But we now arrive at the age of another Malachy, great-grandson of 
Flan, and his great contemporary and rival, Brian Boroihme. Both 
these princes were able and patriotic — the latter, indeed, a man of 
energy and talents of the highest order. We find Malachy sometimes 
like former kings, attacking his tributaries, but we see him more fre- 
quently in arms against the Danes. For a while we find him in alliance 
with Brian against these foreigners; this alliance, however, is of short 
duration; jealousy rises between the two.- But the star of Brian 
becomes the lord of the ascendant ; after a struggle for a time of vary- 
ing fortune, Brian compels Aedh O'Neill, heir-apparent to the throne, to 
confess his supremacy and Malachy to yield hi::i the crown of Ireland. 

Brian Boroihme seems to have made a near< v approach to the con- 
solidation of the monarchy than any former king. The petty princes 
were reduced to subordination. Many wise and good regulations were 
made. The tributes necessary to sustain his power were exacted, but, 
on the other hand, obedience was conciliated by profuse hospitality and 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 5 Of 

liberal gifts. Brian's death, at an advanced age, was worthy alike of a 
king and a patriot. He fell, victorious over the foes of his country, at 
Clontarf, on Good Friday, the 23d of April, 1014. On this day of tri- 
umph and of grief for Ireland, which witnessed such a glorious termina- 
tion of Brian's reign and life, the power of the Danes in Ireland and 
their hopes of conquest were broken for ever. A few of their settle- 
ments on the coasts remained, but they were no longer menacing, and 
no successful, or even very formidable, Danish invasion occurred after 
Clontarf. Indeed, long before the close of the century the Danes had 
altogether ceased to pursue the career of sea-rovers. 

No other permanent good result, however, followed from the vigorous 
reign of Brian. Indeed, Dr. Petrie, Moore and others appear even to 
think that his usurpation, or at least assumption, of the dignity of ard- 
righ went far to destroy the last feeble bond of union or cohesion that 
existed in the political system of Ireland, inasmuch as it interrupted, or 
rather put an end to, the regular succession of the two branches of the 
royal dynasty. Brian was, indeed, worthy of the position he won ; and 
if he had succeeded, during his lifetime, in a thorough unification of Ire- 
land, and had established the succession in his family, and if his pos- 
terity had possessed anything like his own vigor of character, his so- 
called usurpation would have been a blessing to Ireland for genera- 
tions, perhaps for ever. But, unfortunately, he established no dynasty. 
On his death his rival Malachy, apparently with general approval, 
resumed the title of supreme monarch. He reigned for eight years after 
the battle of Clontarf, displaying great valor and energy in his combats, 
both with his Irish tributaries and the Danish settlers, distinguishing 
himself also by deeds of charity, showing clearly that he was one of 
those who could profit by adversity. This venerable monarch died in 
his seventy-fourth year, on the 2d of September, 1022. 

But after the death of Malachy it became perfectly plain that the 
regular succession was at an end for ever. Indeed, there were scarcely 
any more supreme monarchs. We read of an interregnum occurring 
more than once between the death of Malachy and the English invasion ; 
and when, during this period, princes did assume the title of ard-righ, 
their right to the supreme authority appears, in most instances, not to 
have been universally acknowledged. They are generally styled nomi- 



508 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



nal or resisted kings. For seventy years, at least, this state of things 
lasted, nor during this period was the Feis or national assembly called 
together. The mutual jealousies of the chiefs all through the island 
were more inveterate than ever. In short, the old story is repeated in 
a worse form. Teigue, son of Brian, is slain through the perfidious 
prompting of his brother Donchadh. This last prince, after a life of 
selfish ambition and rapine, retires to a monastery in Rome. We read 
of a Diarrnid Mac Mael-na-mbo, king of Leinster, called by some a 
supreme monarch ; a Turlough O'Brien, king of Minister, also claiming 
the title of monarch of Ireland ; later we read of Muircheartach O'Brian 
and his powerful rival Domhnall O'Lochlinn, two princes who, along 
with the fierceness characteristic of the times, possessed many fine and 
manly qualities. Immediately after these the most stirring chaiacter 
in Ireland is Turlough O'Connor, king of Connaught, All these princes 
arrogated to themselves, with more or less recognition throughout the 
island, the dignity of ard-righ, and they all, like the earlier kings, pursued 
a course of internecine strife and rapine. Roderick O'Connor suc- 
ceeded his father, Turlough, as king of Connaught. After a long con- 
test for the supreme power with Muircheartach O'Lochlainn. king of 
Ulster, who had been acknowledged ard-righ, Roderick finally suc- 
ceeded in attaining the height of his ambition. Muircheartach. who 
had qualities deserving of a better fate, was slain in battle, and Rod- 
crick became undisputed monarch of Ireland. He was our last ard- 
righ. 

xVll these disorders necessarily reduced Ireland to an extreme degree 
of weakness. It is manifest, then, that few permanent advantages 
flowed from the reign of Brian Boiroihme, or the great crowning victory 
of his life at Clontarf. It may not be much out of place to notice here 
that a whimsical, though clever, English writer of the present day, the 
Reverend Dr. Kingsley, people's man and court-chaplain, pretends, in 
his novel of "Hereward," or in a note to a passage of that work, to 
doubt, or even denies, that any such victory over the Danes was ever 
achieved by the Irish. Wha1 his authority for this denial may be I 
know not. Possibly his blindness to facts is caused by his dislike of 
the Irish name, which, to judge from many passages in his voluminous 
writings, is rabid and rancorous. This reverend gentleman has been 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 509 

styled the Christian Socialist from some absurd speculations in his 
novel of "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," one of the most silly and 
repulsive stories ever written. But returning from this digression con- 
cerning the reverend courtier and socialist's historical doubts, it is quite 
plain that the condition of Ireland, when Eoderick began to reign, was 
one of such weakness and exhaustion as left her little strength to repel 
any fresh invasion that might occur. Agriculture must have been grow- 
ing less and less every day. A pastoral state of society alone was com- 
patible with such confusion and strife. Hence, too, the population, if it 
did not actually dwindle, would remain stationary. Indeed, the whole 
state of society in Ireland had retrograded greatly since the first incur- 
sions of the Danes. Letters and the arts had, of course, upon the whole, 
declined, though, occasionally, learning would seem to rally and even 
flourish in the monasteries. Students still came to the schools of Ire- 
land from other lands, and Ireland could yet boast bards and chroni- 
clers and sainted sages like St. Malaehy, the friend of St. Bernard. 
It has ever been a trait in the Irish character deserving of unqualified 
praise that, even in an unsettled state of society, and amid civil discord 
and disturbances of all sorts, the Irish are inclined to respect and pro- 
tect men devoted to the pursuit of learning. 

It is not, then, very surprising that when, in 1169 and the following 
year, the treason of Diarmaid Mac Murchadha to his native country 
brought over Strongbow, Fitzstephen and Raymond le Gros, with the 
first bands of Anglo-Norman adventurers, those well-disciplined war- 
riors, acting in concert, skillfully led, in every respect well appointed — 
the knights and men-at-arms in complete steel of proof; the archers 
unerring marksmen, — it is not, I say, surprising that those well-trained 
warriors encountered at first but slight resistance from the disunited 
clans of Ireland, all armed with indifferent offensive weapons, wanting 
defensive armor, ill-disciplined and unskillfully led. English writers 
tell us of Irish hosts defeated by the valor of mere handfuls of the in- 
vaders, but, in reality, those Irish armies were little better than mobs 
in our own time ; and considering how small the population of Ireland 
must have been at that date, the conclusion is inevitable that their 
numbers have been absurdly exaggerated. To crown the misfortunes 
of Ireland, she had no patriot leader to whom the whole island could 



510 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

look with confidence. The character of King Koderick seems to have 
been feeble and vacillating ; he was, at all events, wholly unequal to the 
crisis. When, in 1171, Henry II. of England landed in person with a 
large force, Koderick made no resistance whatever, but tamely sub- 
mitted and acknowledged the English king as his lord-paramount. 

But almost from the fatal day of this disgraceful submission down 
to the present horn" the history of Ireland and the Irish race has been a 
history of revolts against the dominion of England. Shortly after the 
first surprise and panic, Irish valor began to rally and rebel. The 
country was disputed with the invading race inch by inch. The Nor- 
man barons, too, from time to time rose in rebellion against the king 
of England ; but for a long period these barons sought, in their revolts, 
mere selfish, not national, objects. In truth, the English kings were, if 
possible, less the enemies of the original Irish than the early Norman 
chieftains of Ireland. In course of time, however, things changed, and 
many of the Norman families intermarried with the old race, and, adopt- 
ing tLeir language and customs, are said to have gradually become 
"more Irish than the Irish themselves." At least, numbers of them 
struck, century after century, against the English rule as vigorously as 
the fie ^est of the Celts. English power began to reel and give ground 
before zhese incessant rebellions. Donald O'Brien was one of the ear- 
liest chiefs who curbed the invaders. He is the most prominent figure 
among the Irish chieftains in the history of the twelfth century. In the 
thirteenth century we find O'Neills, O'Connors O'Briens, O'Donnells 
and other Irish chieftains repeatedly combating the English, some- 
times victorious, sometimes vanquished; but, unhappily, we also find 
them repeatedly fighting with each other, and even frequently in alli- 
ance with the English. In the fourteenth century the English authority 
in Ireland was far more seriously menaced. In the first half of the century, 
Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, flushed with his glorious victory of Ban- 
nockburn, by which he had delivered his country from the same cruel 
yoke against which the Irish were for ever struggling, listened favorably 
to the entreaties of the northern Irish chieftains, who proposed, if he 
would lend them assistance against their oppressors, to confer the crown 
of Ireland upon his brother, Edward Bruce. On the 20th of May, 1315, 
the latter prince landed on the coast of Antrim with a force amountiug 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 511 

to about 6000 men. The northern Irish rallied round him. Ulster was 
won. He was proclaimed king of Ireland, and afterward solemnly 
crowned at Dundalk. His brother, King Robert, came to his aid. For 
a while everything seemed to promise fairly for Ireland's independence, 
but fortune turned. The good king Robert was compelled to return to 
Scotland, and, finally, his gallant and adventurous brother was defeated 
and slain on the 14th of October, 1318, at the disastrous battle of Fau- 
ghard, near Dundalk ; and thus what appeared a grand opport unity for 
regaining Ireland's independence came to nothing. 

In the latter part of this century another formidable enem) of Eng- 
lish power arose. I allude to the celebrated Art Macmorough. From 
1377, when he succeeded his father as prince of Leinster, to 1417, when 
he died, not without some suspicion of poison, this indomitable chieftain 
held his own against the common enemies of himself and his country. 
Art seems to have possessed the noblest and most generous qualities, 
but though far superior to any Irish leader whom the English had yet 
encountered, he never, any more than his predecessors or contempo- 
raries, grasped in his mind the broad idea of an united Irish nation. 
He strove, indeed, with unconquerable energy and skilful policy, and 
not without merited success, to guard the independence of his an- 
cestral principality, and no doubt he felt the keen, fierce delight of a 
patriot warrior in again and again discomfiting the forces of the hated 
stranger, but we have few or no grounds for thinking that he ever 
meditated or hoped to achieve a thorough overthrow of the English 
dominion in Ireland. Perhaps, indeed, such a design was at the time 
impracticable, considering the probably diminished numbers of the old 
race, their increasing misery and disorder, above all, their constant 
divisions and narrow jealousies. In all these wars only fractions of the 
Irish people strove against the enemy, and the enemy was generally 
assisted by other sections of the suffering nation. 

Through the remainder of the fifteenth and early half of the six- 
teenth centuries similar struggles and similar divisions continue, Irish 
chieftains battling fiercely against the hated Saxon, Irish chieftain» 
making base alliances with the Saxon ; worse still, members of the same 
sept arrayed against each other. But a somewhat compensating feature 
begins to manifest itself. A large proportion of the descendants of the 



512 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



early and even later Anglo-Norman settlers have become thoroughly 
Irish, or, as some say, "ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores " ("more Irish than 
the Irish themselves"). They have almost wholly abandoned the habits 
of their forefathers, and adopted, instead, the garb and customs, lan- 
guage and ideas of the Celts. They adopt fosterage and gossipred; 
give their children to Irish nurses, and become godfathers to the off- 
spring of their retainers. In defiance of Saxon law they take to their 
bosoms Irish wives. They patronize bard and brehon. But, above all, 
they begin to hate and defy the English foreigner, and take every oppor- 
tunity to rebel against his authority. We have Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, 
better remembered as "Silken Thomas," in hot rebellion against Henry 
VIII. We have the earls of Desmond, the chiefs of the Minister Fitz- 
geralds, at one time secretly negotiating for an invasion of Ireland with 
Francis I. of France, at a later period carrying on protracted wars 
against the sovereigns of England. We have Geraldines of Desmond 
and Geraldines of Kildare losing their heads on the scaffold. We have, 
of course, frequent instances of English perfidy. 

But during the fifteenth century even the lords of the pale (as the 
territory round Dublin that held the English colony was styled) begin to 
show some occasional signs of disaffection to England. When Sir Rich- 
ard Edgecomb came to Ireland as king's commissioner in 1488, he pre- 
sumed to remonstrate, in a menacing tone, with certain refractory lords 
of the pale, upon which they made the spirited answer that, rather than 
yield to any arbitrary proposals or restraints, they would take part with 
the native Irish against their king. Singular to say, London itself was 
filled with rude alarms by an Irishman during the disturbed reign of 
Henry VI. Shakespeare has given, in the second part of Heniy VI., a 
wonderfully vivid picture of the revolt, headed by Jack Cade, which for 
a brief season terrified the citizens of London. As might be expected, 
Shakespeare's scenes are not merely true as the old chronicles to the 
whimsical characters and incidents of Cade's insurrection, but they are 
an image, more or less faithful, of all mob tumults. In Ireland, English 
power was in those days rapidly dwindling into complete insignificance. 
In 1123 the Ulster chieftains totally defeated the lord deputy and the 
English forces. When peace was subsequently made, it was only on the 
condition that the English should bind themselves to pay a tribute. 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 513 

called " Black Kent," to the victors. Some time about the year 1471 
the English settlers were in so precarious a state, and felt their hold on 
Irish soil so insecure, that they thought it necessary to form a defensive 
military brotherhood — styled the "Brothers of St. George" — consisting 
of fourteen loyal men of rank, selected from the four counties of the pale, 
Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Louth. For a time the captain of the fra- 
ternity had under his command a standing power of 200 men. But at 
a later period, from lack of means, it was reduced to 120 troopers, and 
for the support of even this small band the English settlers were obliged 
to look for aid to England. 

Indeed, the English pale about 1534, or near four centuries from the 
so-called conquest, had grown so "fine by degrees and beautifully less" 
that it could no longer be said to comprehend within its limits even the 
four counties around Dublin. There is reason to believe that, at this 
time, English laws, government, organization, language and usages 
hardly prevailed in any direction beyond twenty miles from Dublin. 
Nor did the partisans of English rule feel that their hold upon even this 
limited territory was a bit too secure. They complained that English 
lords took Irish tenants, and that the " Black Eent " was paid to certain 
Irish chiefs. Upon the whole, even in the sixteenth century, the old 
Celtic form of society still held sway in Ireland. Many of the Norman 
lords, as I have already intimated, spoke the Irish language, adopted 
Irish habits, and even went so far as to assume Celtic prefixes to their 
names (thus the De Burghos called themselves Mac "Williams) and to be- 
come veritable chiefs of clans. All attempts to introduce the English 
innovations, however backed by penal laws or the sword, failed to van- 
quish the stubbornness with which the people of the ancient race and 
the Anglo-Norman Irish, whom they from time to time absorbed, clung 
to their primitive and unique form of civilization. This Celtic civilization, 
with its peculiar manners, traditions, literature, music and other arts, 
bearing little or no resemblance to those of any other country, the old 
Irish, in the course of long and hoary ages, had with great originality 
of mind succeeded in working out for themselves, with scarcely any in- 
debtedness to ancient Greece or Rome, the fountains whence the other 
nations of Europe had drawn their nascent civilization. Hence the 
Irish loved and clung to their own customs with a peculiar fondness. It 



514 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



is indeed curious, and illustrative of the Celt's tenacious adherence to old 
usages, to observe how those forms and features of an antique society 
and civilization still hold dominion, more or less, over the hearts and 
lives of our people. 

A new and terrible element of confusion was introduced into Ireland, 
as into other countries, in the sixteenth century. I allude to what is 
styled "The Eeformation," and to the religious discord it produced. If 
the country and its inhabitants had been torn asunder by animosities 
and strife before, society in Ireland now and henceforward became a per- 
fect chaos of contending evil passions. No one can hope to understand 
thoroughly O'Connell's career, the struggles that rilled his lifetime, or 
those that agitate Irishmen in our own day, without first comprehending 
the history of past Irish dissensions, and above all our religious dissen- 
sions. From these dissensions of the past nearly all the questions that 
have been vexed, and nearly all the events that have taken place in Ire- 
land during the present century, derive their origin; so that, if we want 
to find out their fitting solution or true significance, we can only do so by 
I >earing in mind and learning to interpret properly our dark and blood- 
stained past. 

Henry VIII., having succeeded in establishing in England, by acts the 
most violent and arbitrary, his own supremacy on the overthrow of the 
papal authority, was impatient to accomplish the same result in Ireland. 
Accordingly, severe penal enactments were passed by the so-called Irish 
Parliament (in reality the Parliament of the pale, and wholly subservient 
to the king's government) against the Catholic religion. All the penal- 
ties of premunire — confiscation and imprisonment during the pleasure of 
the sovereign — menaced those who should dare to defend the authority of 
the Roman pontiff. Laws were also passed for the suppression of Irish 
monasteries. Some of these were plundered and desolated ; sacred im- 
ages were profaned. The inmates of the religious houses were perse- 
cuted and driven into exile, sometimes massacred. At a later period, 
any one guilty of persistent refusal to acknowledge the religious su- 
premacy of the king was liable to the penalties of high treason. Those 
who refused to attend the novel worship were liable to fines and cen- 
sures. Numbers were enriched by the confiscation and plunder of church 
property But, in the teeth of every threat and danger, the vast major- 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 515 

ity of the Irish people clung to the ancient faith of their fathers. In- 
deed, the perils to which their fidelity exposed them only made their re- 
ligion dearer to their hearts. It was quite natural, then, that when they 
beheld the shrines which they were accustomed to venerate desecrated 
under the sanction of English laws by the profane hand of the spoiler, 
rifled of their sacred vessels and ornaments, and when, in addition, they 
beheld their holiest men persecuted and banished, if not murdered, 
while they knew that they were not safe themselves from the same tyr- 
anny,— it was only natural that their hatred of the foreign race and rule 
that imposed those tyrannous laws upon their country should be intens- 
ified day after day. It is in no way wonderful that, about this period, 
the secret negotiations of the Irish chiefs with foreign potentates should 
become frequent and dangerous to English rule in Ireland. In the reigns 
of these sovereigns of the house of Tudor we find the Irish at one time 
negotiating with the emperor Charles Y., the kings of France and Scot- 
land and the Holy Father, on other occasions negotiating with one or 
other of these monarchs separately. We find them, in their contests 
with England, occasionally inviting and getting the aid of Scotch auxil- 
iaries, and still more frequently receiving assistance from Spanish 
troops. Unfortunately, these last seldom arrived at the proper time or 
came in sufficient force to be of any real service. 

Not long before the commencement of the Geraldine war (which I 
shall notice presently), in Queen Elizabeth's reign, we find Sir James 
Fitzmaurice, one of the gallant Geraldines of Munster, obtaining a 
bull from Pope Gregory XIII. , in which the Irish were stimulated to 
fight for their national freedom and faith. Those who should fight in 
the good cause were promised the same indulgences and spiritual priv- 
ileges which had been accorded to the Crusaders fighting for the deliver- 
ance of the Holy Sepulchre. Nor did the pontiff's sympathy with the 
cause of Ireland end here. Six hundred Italians, intended to co-operate 
with the Irish, were equipped by him, and placed under the command 
of an English soldier of fortune, named Thomas Stukely, on whom he 
conferred many high-sounding but somewhat inane Irish titles. Fitz- 
maurice also sought and expected help from King Philip of Spain. But 
his plans were upset; for the erratic adventurer, Stukely, seduced by Dom 
Sebastian of Portugal's more magnificent project of invading Morocco, 



51(3 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



without the least scrapie broke his Irish engagements, and, flinging 
away his expectations of Irish marquisates for Moorish principalities in 
the air, accompanied the Portuguese expedition to Africa. There, in the 
fierce fight at Alcacarquiver, he perished along with King Sebastian and 
his host and all their visionary conquests, dignities and spoils. 

What is wonderful in the Catholic Irish of those days is that, unlike 
all the other nations of that age, although persecuted sorely themselves, 
they did not in their day of power retaliate on the members of the hos- 
tile sect. During Queen Mary's reign, while in England the frequent 
fires of bigotry blazed in Smithtield, and Protestants were burned at the 
stake by scores, persecution was unknown in Ireland. Some Protestant 
families, even, that had been obliged to tiy from England, found both 
toleration and shelter in Ireland. But all this humanity failed to serine 
even moderate treatment for the Catholic Irish when the accession of 
Elizabeth restored religious sway to the partisans of the Reformation. 
Mr. Mitehel, in one of the introductory chapters of his admirable " Life 
of Hugh O'Neill, " brings together, in one paragraph, an accumulation 
of horrid facts, giving a vivid picture of the ferocious cruelties and 
tyranny that, born of the bigotry of the age, then disgraced nearly every 
country in Europe. In this paragraph he specifies several of the san- 
guinary aets of religious persecution perpetrated in Ireland by the 
officials of Elizabeth: "How Patrick O'llely. l>i:shop of Mayo, and Cor- 
nelius O'Rorke, a pious priest, were by order of Drury placed on the 
rack, their hands and feet broken with hammers, needles thrust under 
their nails: how they were at last hanged ; how Dermot O'Hurley, arch- 
bishop of Cashel, was arrested by order of Adam Loftus (chancellor of 
the pale and queen's archbishop of Dublin); how he was loaded with 
irons until the Holy Thursday of the following year, dragged before the 
chancellor and treasurer, questioned, tortured, and finally hanged out- 
side the city walls before break of day; how John Stephens, a priest, 
having been duly convicted 'for that he said mass to Teague Mac Hugh,' 
was hanged and quartered." Mr. Mitehel adds that "all this and much 
raoie may be found in the martyrologists of the time.*' Indeed, the 
never-ending scenes of horror, the deeds of unsparing tyranny, some- 
times on religious and sometimes on civil grounds, ••that till the spa- 
cious times of great Elizabeth," in Ireland at least, form, taken as a 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 517 

whole, one of the "bloodiest pictures of the book of time." It is in no 
way astonishing that, during the entire course of Elizabeth's long reign, 
the fires of Irish rebellion were never wholly extinguished. If they occa- 
sionally indeed smouldered for a brief time, on the other hand they were 
generally ablaze over the greater portion of the island. 

The most formidable opponent of Queen Elizabeth in the earlier 
years of her reign was Shane O'Neill, surnamed Shane the Proud. This 
fierce chieftain boasted that he had never on any occasion sued to the 
queen for peace, that she had always been obliged to make the first 
overtures to him. For a time, in spite of occasional checks from the 
O'Donnells, his power was dreaded and obeyed by nearly all the tribes 
of Ulster. But his character and career were fierce and turbulent. He 
made bitter and implacable enemies all around him by his lawlessness. 
He captured the chief of the O'Donnells and robbed him of his fair wife. 
He crushed and despoiled his neighbors, the O'Reillys, Maguires and 
Antrim Scots. For long he defied the English and baffled their treach- 
ery, entertained Sir Henry Sydney, acting as royal deputy, with princely 
hospitality, but spurned the English titles offered in the queen's name 
by the earl of Sussex. At the same time he visited the queen in Lon- 
don, astonishing both court and city with his "gallant train of guards 
bare-headed, with curled hair hanging down their shoulders, armed with 
battle-axes and arrayed in their saffron doublets;" but out of this visit 
eventually came his ruin. He made an alliance with the queen (who 
secretly swore "by God's death" to destroy him) against the kindred 
Scotch tribes of Antrim, Mac Donnells and Mac Neills. For a while he 
waged cruel w r ar against them, slaying and carrying into captivity some 
of their leading men. At last, too late, he saw what a fatal snare the 
alliance with England had been. Finding that, on one false pretence or 
other, the English were encroaching on his territory, he attacked them 
at Deny, dislodged their garrison from Armagh, burning both church 
and town. He next invaded the pale, ravaging the lands and razing the 
castles of the English settlers, but his star of prosperous fortune began 
to set rapidly. The whole power of the English was turned to his 
destruction. Maguire and other chiefs, whom his pride and fierceness 
had rendered hostile, joined in a league against him with the new chief 
of the O'Donnells, Hugh, brother and successor of Calvagh, the prince 



518 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

whom Shane had so deeply injured. O'Donnell's forces routed him on 
the 8th of May, 1567, not far from Letterkenny, driving him back on 
the river Swilly, where numbers of his men perished in the waves and 
by the sword. Totally beaten, and deserted by nearly all his followers, 
his ruin was now complete. He took, however, the bold resolution of 
seeking refuge among his former enemies, the Antrim Scotch. At first 
they seemed inclined to give him hospitality and protection, but one 
Piers, an English agent, was there to rouse the revengeful feelings of the 
Mac Donnells. In a brawl, apparently preconcerted, the tierce but gal- 
lant Shane — a chief great alike "in battle and carouse" — was per- 
fidiously slaughtered with his small hand of followers. The miscreant 
Piers sent his head "pickled in a pipkin" to the lord-deputy, receiving 
in exchange blood-money to the tunc of one thousand marks. The lord- 
deputy basely caused the chieftain's ghastly head to be "gibbeted high 
on a pole," where it "long grinned over the towers of Dublin Castle." 

The reigns of all these Tudor sovereigns are disgraced by repeated 
instances of the blackest cruelty and treachery on the part of the Eng- 
lish authorities in Ireland. In the reign of Edward VI. we have, on one 
occasion, in Dublin, the execution of thirteen of the Fitzgeralds or their 
partisans. In the reign of Queen Mary, which, like her brother's, was 
short, we have abundance of .slaughter and desolation, and sore oppres- 
sion of numerous clans, under the administration of Thomas Radcliffe 
earl of Sussex, and Sir Henry Sydney; but in the long reign of Eli/a 
beth we might, as Mr. Mitchel says, "sup full of horrors." In this place 
it may be as well to notice briefly a few instances of the treachery which 
characterized English rule at this period. Walter Devereux, earl of 
Essex, president of Ulster and earl-marshal of Ireland, arrived in that 
island in L573 to try and carry out a scheme of confiscation and English 
colonization in the northern province. The scheme appears to lane 
been a sort of anticipation of the plantation of lister that subsequently 
took effect in James I.'s reign. This "undertaker," finding that the 
O'Neills of Claneboy and other Irish chiefs were nol inclined to submit 
to the robbery of their patrimony quite so easily as the interests of 
British sway demanded — in short, finding himself in a somewhat diffi- 
cult position — thought a little treachery might help him in his civilizing 
mission. Accordingly, he perfidiously seized his ally, Con O'Donnell, 



PKELIMINAKY SKETCH OF JLRISH HISTORY. 519 

and sent him prisoner to Dublin ; but this was a mere nothing com- 
pared to another exploit of his. Brian O'Neill and the earl, after being 
at variance, came to a friendly understanding. Brian, apparently 
desirous of celebrating the establishment of peace between them in a 
hospitable Irish fashion, invited Essex to be his guest. The English- 
man, taking an infamous advantage of the absence of distrust and 
relaxation of all vigilance and precaution on Brian's part in such a 
festal time, seized his host and hostess, also Brian's brother, and at the 
same time caused the attendants, matrons, young men and maidens, to 
be brutally butchered in their unfortunate master's presence. Then 
Brian and his wife and brother were brought to Dublin, and there ruth- 
lessly cut up in quarters. This savage act filled the Irish with horror 
and the keenest desire of vengeance. 

Even this inhuman act of treachery was, if possible, surpassed by a 
deed of horror perpetrated in 1577 by the enlightened and politic or 
crafty Sir Henry Sydney, whom I have already referred to, the father 
(alas!) of the graceful, the accomplished, the generous, chivalrous and 
humane Sir Philip Sydney, who later in the sixteenth century died so 
nobly on the field of Zutphen. Sir Henry was one of the ablest men 
who ever managed English business in Ireland — an admirable ruler, at 
all events, from the English point of view, but things look quite different 
viewed from the Irish point. Doubtless, Sir Henry, like the JSTormanbys 
and Carlisles and Spencers and Gladstones of our own century, knew 
full well how to play the part of conciliating the Irish ; he could even, 
on occasion, abolish oppressive taxes. He was great in the interests of 
peace and order. His greatest exploit, however, in furtherance of the 
noble cause of English law and order and civilization was performed in 
the year 1577 at Mullaghmast, near Athy, the scene, in our own times, 
of one of O'Connell's grandest monster meetings for "Repeal" — the one 
at which the celebrated sculptor, John Hogan, crowned him. The prin- 
cipal men of Offaly and Leix (now the King's and Queen's counties) 
were invited by the wily and unscrupulous lord-justice, Sir Henry, to 
come together at the great rath of Mullaghmast for an amicable confer- 
ence. Confiding in the honor and good faith of this knightly Sydney, 
about 400 came, free from doubt or misgiving or fear of any sort, but 
they paid dearly for their trust. Caught in the toils and quickly encir- 



520 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

cled by a triple line of the royal troops, they were suddenly assailed : 
the pitiless steel of the English soldiery drank their blood. Hardly one 
escaped to tell the tale. This reminds one of the fate of the entire body 
of the nobles of the gallant Bashkir nation, in Asia, in the reign of 
Catherine II., who were too successfully lured to destruction by the Rus- 
sian governor of Ufa's treacherous invitation to a banquet, All these 
tales of English treachery and massacre are horrible, but it is still more 
horrible to read that chiefs of Irish race were sometimes found to help 
their foreign masters in this bloody work of treachery against their own 
countrymen. Mac Giolla Patrick, baron of Upper Ossory (for this base 
minion of English power preferred a Saxon coronet to the Celtic wand 
of chieftaincy), on the 30th of June, 1578, assassinated the valiant out- 
law, Rory Oge O'More, who had stoutly and gallantly maintained his 
independence of English power for eighteen years. 

Of all the many rebellions that occurred in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth, in all probability the one attended with the greatest amount of hu- 
man suffering was that called the Ceraldine war. 1 have already spoken 
of the eflbrtsof Sir .lames Fit/inaurice to enlist the sympathies of foreign 
potentates in the cause of Ireland, and to raise an auxiliary force of 
Italians or Spaniards; we saw how Stukely played him false and aban- 
doned him. As it was plain, however, that the intolerable wrongs and 
sufferings of the [rish under British tyranny had created lor them- 
selves and their cause a considerable sympathy anion-- all the nations 
of the Continent that had clung to the old faith, Fitxniaurice persevered. 
At last arriving in Smerwi k Bay with three small ships, a small hand 
of eighty Spaniards, and bearing a consecrated banner from the pope, 
this enterprising leader made a daring descent on the const and fortified 
a tongue of land which was named Fort-del-ore. After this, however, 
he met with naught save bitter disappointment and swift ruin. The 
head of all the Geraldines, Bar] Gerald, vacillated, and finally declined 
putting himself at the head of a revolt, though he had grievances enough 
to spur him on and warrant such a step. It was not so very Ion-- since 
he had escaped from the prison into which Lord-Deputy Sydney had 
cast him, but he was jealous of, or, at least, disliked, his cousin Fitz- 
uiaurice. In short, we find him even shamefully taking side with the 
queen, and hunting Fitzmaurice and his own two brothers, James and 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 521 



John. The gallant and enduring Fitzmaurice, after pushing on to Tip- 
perary, is finally surrounded in a thick and lonely wood by the brothers 
Theobald and TJlick Bourke of Castleconnell and some of the O'Briens 
of Arra. Irishmen (alas ! ) again pursuing Irishmen to the death, and 
that, too, for the accursed stranger! But the brave Munster Geraldine, 
like the heroic Leinster Geraldine of '98, sells his life right dearly. In 
the last fierce fight of despairing valor. Fitzmaurice is wounded by a 
ball in the chest, but ere he falls he smites the two false Bourkes of 
Castleconnell. The expiring warrior cleaves with one noble stroke the 
head of Theobald, and next mortally wounds Ulick. Calmly giving final 
directions to the faithful few who still stand by him, Fitzmaurice dies. 
A grieving kinsman cuts off his head and hides the trunk under an old 
tree ; this a hunter subsequently finds and brings to Kilmallock ; there, 
swinging from a gallows, it is riddled by the shots of ungenerous ene- 
mies. This was the end of the adventurous Sir James Fitzgerald, or 
Fitzmaurice (as he was called from his father, Maurice of Desmond), 
an able leader and good patriot, generous, brave, prudent, earnest and 
indomitable. 

And now, when too late, we find Earl Gerald raising the standard 
of ojDen revolt and joining his outlawed brothers and kinsfolk — reluc- 
tantly, however, and not till the thanklessness of the English governors 
for his adhesion to the queen's side was made too manifest. He had 
given his only son and heir, James, as a hostage for his loyalty to the 
lord-justice, and in return had been promised a protection. The Eng- 
lish fulfilled this promise by destroying the cattle of his tenants, plun- 
dering his crops, laying waste his lands and burning his castles. 1 
have not space to give any very lengthened detail of the incidents of 
this calamitous war, which turned the whole south-west of Ireland into 
a melancholy scene of utter desolation. The English destroyed all the 
houses and corn within their reach. The Geraldines themselves, anx- 
ious to lessen the resources of the foe, helped to increase the devastation 
of their country. "We find the earl of Ormond, chief of the Butlers and 
hereditary enemy of the Desmonds, assisting the lord-justice to crush 
his hapless countrymen, and sparing neither age nor sex. It is still 
more strange and mortifying to find the great Hugh O'Neill assisting 
the English in this horrid war. Throughout its whole course this was 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



a dreary and almost hopeless struggle for the Irish, checkered with few 
passing gleams of success or glory. Sometimes, indeed, the maddened 
Irish, turning fiercely on their ruthless foes and standing at bay, would 
slaughter a number of the marauders. A seasonable diversion, too, was 
made by Eustace, Lord Baltinglass, with the O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, O'Kav- 
enaghs and others, on the borders of the pale, and at least one glorious 
victory was won, that of Glendalough in 1580, when stout Fiach Mac 
Hugh, the mountain-chief of the O'Byrnes, totally defeated the lord- 
deputy, Arthur, Lord Grey. The Irish drew the English uiain body, 
consisting of infantry, into the defile; then suddenly pouring a volley into 
them from the surrounding coverts, they darted fiercely with wild battle- 
cry on their startled and bewildered foes, slaying several of their best 
captains — Carew, Moore, Audley and Cosby — and 800 of their common 
soldiers. Grey and his cavalry witnessed the slaughter of their coun- 
trymen without being able, owing to the broken and difficult nature of 
the ground, to give them any help. Finally, he had to retreat to Dub- 
lin, covered with the shame of his rash at tempt to force the defile, which 
bcems to have been made contrary to the advice of his most prudent 
captains. 

But, in spite of such transient gleams of success, the fortune of war 
was almost wholly against Ireland. The deputy ere long found an 
opportunity of taking a cruel and ignoble revenge for his discomfiture. 
Ormond besieged in Fort-del-ore 700 Spaniards and Italians who had 
landed in Smerwick Harbor in September, 15S0, and compelled them to 
surrender at discretion, according to English authorities, but according 
to the Irish on sworn articles. Be this as it may, Lord Grey caused 
them all to be slaughtered in cold blood. Speaking himself of their sur- 
render and the atrocious deed of wholesale murder that followed, he 
coolly says, "Then put 1 in certeyne bandes who streighte fell to execu- 
tion;" and also, ■There were 600 slayn." Xo wonder that 'Grey's 
faith'' became a proverbial phrase of reproach throughout all Europe. 

Even an insurrection in Connaught, in which we find Click and 
John Bourke, sons of the earl of Clanriekard, engaged, together with 
O'Kourkes, O'Connors and O'Briens, failed to strengthen the cause ol 
Ireland. Some of the leaders give in quickly. Indeed, the history of 
the greater portion of this war is little else than a chronicle of English 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 523 



atrocities. In 1581 forty-five persons are hanged in Dublin. In the 
southern war, Zouch and (sad to say) the celebrated Sir Walter Ealeigh 
signalize themselves by peculiar cruelty and rapacity. The hunted 
Geraldines still, however, occasionally strike successful blows at their 
enemies. John of Desmond even overruns the lands of the Butlers and 
MacCarthy More, sweeping away creaghts of cattle and other spoil. Des- 
mond, though defeated by Zouch near Aghadoe, rallies, advances to 
Cashel, captures and plunders it. But, in spite of these partial suc- 
cesses, the G-eraldine cause is lost ; reverses follow thick and fast ; John 
of Desmond is defeated by Zouch, and slain. His body hangs in chains 
for three years at one of the city gates of Cork; at last, one stormy 
night, it is blown into the sea. The head is spiked in front of the castle 
of Dublin. James of Desmond and his two sons are hanged shortly 
after John's death. Zouch hangs some children he holds as hostages. 
Still, Desmond himself struggles on with occasional success, but at 
last he becomes a hunted fugitive. Himself and his countess, in 1582, 
at Christmas-time, have to stand for concealment up to their necks in 
water under a river-bank. Through the year 1583 the wretched earl 
deserted by all save a small band of gallowglasses, is hunted from 
place to place, having no longer any secure spot whereon to lay his 
head. His hereditary enemy Oimond vindictively pursues the fallen 
earl ; at last, on the 11th of November, 1583, the aged earl is surrounded 
in a hut, wounded and made captive. His head is sent to England, 
enclosed in an iron cage, and impaled on London Bridge. His body 
is interred by the peasantry in the little chapel of Kilnamanagh, near 
Castleisland, Kerry. Spanish vessels, with men, arms and money for 
the earl, arrive too late. They immediately return to Spain, for the 
Geraldine war is evidently at an end. 

Such was the fate of the once powerful earl of Desmond. Indeed, the 
might of the noble race of the southern Geraldines was extinguished for 
ever. Some years before, a haughty earl of Desmond, when borne by the 
victorious Butlers, wounded and a prisoner, from the field of Affane, was 
tauntingly asked, "Where is now the proud earl of Desmond?" His 
answer was a fierce and scornful sarcasm: " Where he ought to be — upon 
the necks of the Butlers !" But the day of Desmond's pride and power 
was now past for ever. The Butlers (subservient tools of English 



524: PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



dominion) became all-powerful in their stead. The dead earl of Des- 
mond and l-lO of his adherents were attainted ; their estates, to the 
extent of 600,000 acres, were confiscated ; English undertakers were to 
colonize them. Though this plantation-scheme did not succeed event- 
ually as well as its originators had hoped it would, yet nothing could 
equal the misery of the Irish race in Minister and the ruin of their 
country at the close of this frightful struggle. The words which, we are 
told by Tacitus, the Caledonian chief Galgacus applied to the Roman 
conquerors of old, might well be turned against the English oppressors 
of the Geraldines: "They make a solitude and call it peace!" The icy- 
hearted but brilliant poet of fancy, Spenser, though, like the old mon- 
ster oddly surnamed the great earl of Cork, he could contemplate with 
considerable complacency the idea of utterly rooting out the Irish, can- 
not help drawing the most vivid and even moving pictures of the scenes 
of woe and desolation that overspread the fair fields of Minister. He 
says : " In all that warre there perished not many by the sword, but 
all by the extremity of famine." The seemingly ideal images of desola- 
tion presented in the following stanza of "The Faery Queen" are copied 
from the realities he witnessed in Ireland while living in Kilcolman 
Castle and enjoying domains robbed from their rightful owner: 

" He in his furie all shall over-rorme, 

And holy church with faithless hands deface, 
That the Bad people, utterly l'oredoue, 

Shall to the utmost mountains fly apace : 

Was never so great waste in any place, 
Nor so fowle outrage doen by living men ; 

For all thy cittiea tiny shall Back and raee, 
And the green grass that growcth they shall bren, 
That even the wilde beast shall dy in starved den." 

In short, the southern Irish were starved to death. Holinshed says: 
"The very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening liensts, many of 
them lay dead, being famished." Here is another quotation from Spen- 
ser: "The end will (I assure me) he very short, and much sooner thai. 
can be /toped for; although there should none of them fall by the sword, 
nor be slain by the souldiours, yet thus being kept from manuranee, and 
their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they would 
quickly consume themselves and devour one another." Again- In a 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTOEY 525 



short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plen- 
tiful! countrey suddainly left voyde of man and beast." The soldiers 
supplemented the exterminating action of starvation by setting fire to 
buildings full of men, women and children. Infants they specially 
destroyed, lest they should grow to "become popish rebels." "Women 
were found hanging from trees, with their children strangled in the 
mothers' hair." Spenser, telling us of the famine-scenes, when the 
poor Irish were forced to feed on carrion, or, like beasts, on roots or 
watercresses or shamrocks, says that, viewing the emaciated sufferers, 
' any stony heart would rue the same." Considering his own somewhat 
stony heart, one is not very much afflicted to read that afterward, in 
1598, during the rage of rekindled warfare, he was burned out of his 
castle of Kilcolman, and lost all his ill-got property. The year follow- 
ing the hapless poet died in London, "for lack of bread." 

It must be admitted that in this reign the Irish, in spite of their 
fierce resistance, were gradually succumbing to the yoke of England. 
The old forms of Celtic society, with their strange features — some of 
which resembled more or less those of the tribe-systems of Syria and 
Arabia, others, such as the custom of having hereditary bards and bre- 
hons, etc., not wholly unlike certain features of the Hindoo castes — were 
giving way at last to the institutions of the stranger. Even during the 
reign of Henry VIII. a few attempts to Anglicise some of the Irishry 
had been made, not altogether without success. The Parliament which 
met in Dublin in June, 1541, during the administration of the politic 
Sir Anthony St. Leger, conferred the title of king of Ireland on Henry 
VIII. and his rightful successors. Before this date the English kings 
had only been styled lords of Ireland. There were idle pomp and foolish 
joy in Dublin on this occasion. Soon after quite a number of Irish 
chiefs were cajoled into surrendering their territories and their Celtic 
appellations of chieftaincy. In return, their estates were given back, 
and Anglo-Norman titles conferred on them by letters-patent. Mur- 
rough O'Brien was made earl of Thomond ; Mac Giolla Patrick became 
baron of Upper Ossory ; Mac William (De Burgo), earl of Clanrickard ; 
O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. Some of the smaller dynasts got foreign titles 
of inferior dignity. Thomond' s brothers, indeed, subsequently opposed 
him. and when he died Donnel claimed succession by the old Celtic law 



526 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY 

of tanistry, and, amid the great enthusiasm of his tribe, proclaimed 
himself O'Brien. In St. Leger's time, too, Irish soldiers are raised tc 
tight lor the king in France and Scotland. In 1549, 0' Carroll becomes 
Daron of Ely. Some Irish chiefs ask the government to arbitrate between 
them. Many tributary chiefs, too, are declared independent of their 
superior dynasts. In Mary's reign, in 1550, the Celtic districts of Leix 
and Offaly are metamorphosed into the Queen's and King's counties, the 
new names being in honor of Mary and her husband, Don Philip of 
Spain. New colonists, to keep down the natives, are introduced, and 
several contumacious Celtic chiefs are hanged or otherwise executed. 
In 1560 we find writs to return members of Parliament issued to the 
counties of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Meath, West Meath, Carlow, Kil- 
kenny, "Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary. In 1569 a Parliament 
declares the laws of tanistry abrogated. Charter-schools are directed to 
be established in various dioceses, the teachers to be all English. Mr. 
Mitchel has the following passage toward the close of his sketch of the 
Geraldine war: "Thus fell the great earl of Desmond; and thus the 
fairest province of this island, wasted and destroyed by the insane war- 
fare of the Irish themselves, lay ready for the introduction of the for- 
eigner's law, civilization and religion; or, as Dr. Leland has it, 'for 
effectually regulating and modelling this country upon the principles of 
justice and liberal policy.' And accordingly a Parliament was soon held 
for the purpose of vesting in the queen of England all the lands which had 
been inhabited by the kinsmen and adherents of Desmond. Letters 
were written to every county in England offering estates in fee to all 
'younger brothers' who would undertake the plantation of Minister; 
each undertaker to plant so many families; but 'none of the native Irish 
to be admitted.'" This progress of the conquest continues steadily 
through the years immediately following the termination of the Ger- 
aldine war. Seven new counties in the north — Armagh, Monaghan, 
Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh and Cavan — are marked out and 
furnished with the usual civilizing staff of sheriffs, coroners and commis- 
sioners of the peace. In 1585 the new lord-justice, Sir John Perrott, 
tries the conciliatory policy: at least he makes believe thai he is rathei 
inclined to treat the natives on somewhat equal terms with the dom- 
inant race. A Parliament assemble?, attended by chiefs of nearly all 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 527 

the Celtic clans. Perrott, in order to pass his laws more easily, even 
wants to suspend Poyning's Act, which subjects the Irish to the Eng- 
lish legislature. This, however, is successfully opposed. With all his 
conciliatory turn, Sir John must do a little in the attainting way. An 
act is passed attainting Eustace Lord Baltinglass and other so-called 
rebels. In a second session of Parliament, held the same year, the 
attainder of Desmond and his partisans, already noticed, is carried 
through. Also claims of chieftains to impose taxes are annulled. Still, 
Sir John Perrott becomes unpopular with the English adventurers. He 
is insulted and thwarted in the council-chamber. Intrigues are got up 
to set the queen against him. Had he not condemned the conduct of that 
true and thorough English civilizer, Sir Richard Bingham, who in 1586 
executed seventy men and women in Galway ; then butchered all the 
garrison of the castle of Cloonoan in Clare; then hanged several dis- 
tinguished Burkes ; and next allowed his soldiery to rob and kill, ad 
libitum, men and women, young and old, in Connaught, himself indulg- 
ing in massacre and executions without limit ? In disapproving of tho 
brutal Sir Richard (who doubtless was ancestor to the tenant-extermin- 
ating and civilizing Bingham, styled earl of Lucan, of our own day) Sir 
John Perrott was unreasonably oblivious of the interests of English civ- 
ilization and civilizers, which should inevitably suffer if anything like 
justice or equality were accorded to the mere native Irish. 

But though the English power and system were gradually creeping 
on through the island, yet Irish resistance was by no means finally 
crushed. In spite of the insidious influences of her crafty policy, the 
Irish were not going to " give up the old land " to Queen Elizabeth 
"without another blow." As I have just taken a hasty survey of the 
most dismal and melancholy, so I shall now give a rapid sketch of the 
most formidable and glorious, of all those fierce struggles against Eng- 
land's power that occurred in the long reign of Elizabeth. I need scarcely 
add I refer to the war in which the politic and renowned Hugh O'Neill 
and the gallant Red Hugh O'Donnell were the leaders of the Irish race 
and cause. 

In all probability, Hugh O'Neill meditated a supreme effort to throw 
off the yoke of England for years before he thought proper to throw off 
the mask. Possessing, as Camden says, " a profound dissembling heart,' 



5^8 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

he dissimulated long. Having spent, during his early life, much of his 
time at the court of England, he learned how to fathom thoroughly 
the policy of the astute statesmen who were the pillars of Elizabeth's 
throne. He could even return them wile for wile, and circumvent them 
with their own arts. He determined to lull to sleep all suspicions of 
his loyalty till the occasion should seem to him ripe and his prepara- 
tions complete. To attain this end he consented to wear the hated 
coronet of the earldom of Tyrone, and even, as we have already noticed, 
went so far as to serve on the queen's side in the Geraldine war. So 
much did he enjoy the confidence of the queen's government that he was 
allowed to raise, equip and discipline six companies of soldiers. Taking 
advantage of this privilege, as fast as one batch of his followers are 
trained he disbands them and commences training a fresh squad of 
recruits, until at length his drilled followers count by thousands. He 
procures a vast quantity of lead for bullets, on the plea that he wants a 
leaden roof for his new house of Dungannon. Perrott's aid enabled him 
to humble the Scots of Antrim, who had begun to rival the power of the 
O'Neills. To compass these ends the crafty earl seems to consent to 
English supremacy, and even advises that the statutes against assum- 
ing the name of O'Neill be enforced. The outwitted queen solemnly 
invests him with the lands of his race; gradually, too, he deprives Tur- 
logh Lynnogh, the nominal chief of the O'Neills, of his influence and 
authority, till at last, at the rath of Tulloghoge, on the stone of royalty, 
girt by the warriors, bards and ollamhs of Tyr-eoghain, having made 
oath to maintain the old customs of the tribe, he receives the wand of 
chieftaincy and is recognized as O'Neill. He next complies with the 
immemorial ceremony of descending from the stone and turning round 
"thrice forward and thrice backward." 

For a considerable time after this O'Neill continued to dissemble 
Meanwhile, several things occurred to favor his designs. The iniquitous 
murder, by a mock trial by jury, of Hugh MacMahon, a northern chief, 
on a trumped-up charge of treason, the whole villainy having been con- 
cocted by the corrupt and rapacious lord-deputy, Sir William Fitzwil- 
liam, tilled the entire north with indignation and a fierce thirst for ven- 
geance. Other villainies of Fitzwilliam fanned the flame. During this 
period, too, some vessels of the storm-tossed Spanish Armada were 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 529 

wrecked on various points of the Irish coasts. Nearly all the chiefs on 
whose lands the Spaniards were cast treated the war-and-tempest-worn 
strangers hospitably, and protected them against the English governors ; 
but no one treated the strangers so kindly or paid them such honors as 
Hugh O'Neill. He foresaw that such courtesy might pave the w r ay for 
a Spanish alliance, and no doubt he took good care to explain the state 
of affairs and interests in Ireland to the Spanish officers. He had all 
this time been busy endeavoring to become reconciled with old enemies 
and healing all the feuds he could — trying, in short, to realize his noble 
project of a northern confederation, which no doubt he considered only 
a step to the creation and consolidation of an independent Irish nation ; 
for the mind of this great chief seems to have grasped the large idea of 
a united Ireland. He and his enemy, O'Cahan, became fast friends ; he 
also formed an alliance with the Ulster Scotch, the Macdonnells of the 
glens of Antrim. But the circumstance of all others which most favored 
his plans was the escape, in 1592, from his dungeon in Dublin Castle, 
of Red Hugh O'Donnell. 

This gallant young prince had some years before, by a most per- 
ridious stratagem, planned by that conciliatory and justice-to-Ireland- 
loving governor, Sir John Perrott, been trapped on board a ship in Loch 
Swilly and born off captive to Dublin; there he languished long in 
prison. In 1591 he first escaped, but the Wicklow chief, Felim O'Toole, 
with whom he took refuge, basely surrendered him through fear. His 
second attempt, which was made in 1592, about Christmas-time, was 
more fortunate ; with two fellow-prisoners, Henry and Art O'Neill, sons 
of Shane, he once more made for the Wicklow Mountains, which were cov- 
ered with snow. All night he and his two friends, buffeted by a snow- 
storm, struggled to reach Glenmalure and the protection of the redoubt- 
able victor of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh O'Byrne ; three days and 
nights they were lost in the mountains. Poor Art perished. O'Donnell 
and Henry O'Neill were at last found by some of O'Byrne's clansmen 
half dead with cold, O'Donnell's feet all frost-bitten. O'Byrne's gener- 
ous hospitality soon gave them fresh life and vigor. O'Donnell sent a 
messenger to Hugh O'Neill, who sent him back a trusty guide. After 
a journey full of peril, O'Donnell reaches Dungannon, where he and 
Hugh O'Neill interchange confidences, and strike up a lasting friendship 



530 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

and alliance. He next goes home to Tyrconnell, "where his tribe wel- 
come him joyously ; but he is hardly home when he hurries, with some 
of his father's warriors, to chastise the ruffian soldiery of Bingham, who 
had just taken and spoiled the Franciscan monastery of Donegal, the 
abode of learned chroniclers. On the 3d of the ensuing May, at the rook 
of Dovne in Kilmacrenan, " the nursing-place of Columkille," his father 
renounces the chieftaincy of the clan, and Ked Hugh, now nineteen 
years of age, is solemnly made The O'Donnell, with the accustomed cere- 
monies of his race. Thus the two great tribes of the Kinnell Connell 
and the Kinnell Eoghain were at length under the sway of two warlike 
and vigorous princes, sworn friends of each other and sworn foes of the 
Saxon. 

Of the two, O'Donnell was the first in the field. He hastened to 
lend effective aid to Maguire, the hard-pressed chieftain of Fermanagh. 
O'Neill thought fit to dissimulate a while longer. To throw dust in the 
eyes of the English, he appeared in arms against Maguire, and, in a 
charge which he made on Maguire's flank, received a wound in the 
thigh. When Sir William Russell came to rule Ireland as the successor 
of the greedy and corrupt Fitzwilliam, O'Neill, with singular audacity, 
even ventured to Dublin to confront his enemies and accusers. It waa 
on this occasion that he defied to mortal combat his brother-in-law, the 
lord-marshal, Sir Henry Bagnal, whose sister he had induced to fly with 
him to Dungannon. In spite of the protection he had received, he would 
in all probability have been treacherously seized, but for the friendly 
warning of the earl of Ormond, which caused him to fly from Dublin. 
Not without risk did he manage to pass through the pale and the toils 
of the enemy that were fast closing round him. 

But the long-looked -tin day was at hand when he was to strike a 
giant's blow for freedom of religion and country. His northern confed- 
eracy was now complete and strong. By family alliances he had even 
won over Macgennis of Iveagh and O'Hanlon of Orier, two chiefs for- 
merly under the influence of Bagnal. In Leinster his friends, the 
0' Byrnes, O'Cavenaghs, and the daring Sir Walter Fitzgerald (sin- 
named Kiagh), who was afterwards caught by treachery and executed in 
Dublin, were attacking and laying waste the frontiers of the pale. The 
glorious hour came at last, in 1595, when the dread royal standard of 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 531 



O'Neill, with "that terrible red right hand upon its snow-white folds." 
waved defiantly over the hills of Tyr-Owen ! 

The great chieftain's operations in the field were at once attended 
with the most brilliant success. He began by defeating the queen's best 
general, the brave Sir John Norreys, along with his brother, Sir Thomas. 
At Clontibret, O'Neill's personal courage was conspicuous, for, in despe- 
rate single encounter — both combatants first shivering their lances on 
each other's mail, and then rolling in deadly embrace from their horses 
to the earth — he slew a gigantic Meathian named Segrave. Throughout 
this war, O'Donnell, when not fighting on the same fields with O'Neill, 
was making fierce irruptions into Connaught, laying waste and spoiling 
the lands of all who supported the English interest. In Leinster, too — 
in spite of the loss of the heroic chief of Glenmalure, the glorious victor 
of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh O'Byrne, who, for twenty years with 
his small clan having stood at bay against the whole power of Elizabeth 
and, within a few miles from the gates of Dublin Castle, maintained his 
independence, had finally, at the suggestion of Sir William Eussell, been 
betrayed by the treachery of a kinsman and executed in May, 1597, 
leaving, however, worthy sons behind him — in spite of this, in the pro- 
vince of Leinster the general aspect of affairs promised well for the 
national cause. O'Mores, O'Carrolls, O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, Cavenaghs, and 
even Butlers, made fierce and sanguinary inroads on the pale. Even 
Crumlin village was burned, within two miles of Dublin. The chief 
men of Connaught, too, combined. Later, the confederacy embraced the 
noblest Celtic and even Norman families of Munster. By O'Neill's 
authority, James, nephew of Earl Gerald, assumes the title of earl of 
Desmond. Though we still find traitor Irish fighting on the side of the 
Saxon — queen's O'Reillys, queen's Maguires, and others — yet the idea 
of a united Irish nation seems, for the first time, about to animate the 
minds of the majority of Irishmen. 

Of all our Irish victories in those days, the most glorious was that 
gained at Beal-an-atha-buidhe, near the river Callan, and two milee 
north of Armagh, on the 10th of August, 1598, by the combined forces 
of the northern and Connaught clans under O'Neill and O'Donnell. On 
the morning of that memorable day a splendid army of veteran English 
troops, led by O'Neill's personal foe, Sir Henry Bagnal, proudly marched 



532 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

forth from the city of Armagh to force the intrenched position of the 
Irish Stoutly the lord-marshal fought his way through all obstacles — 
through ambuscades of light-armed troops, guarding the intervening 
denies and sending their volleys into his ranks out of thick fir-tree 
groves — till he was able to form his army on the more open ground in 
front of the Irish line of battle. This accomplished, he attacks without 
delay. Nor did the sight of the cavalry tumbling headlong, both men 
and horses, into the treacherous pitfalls which O'Neill had cunningly 
caused to be dug in front of his defences and covered over nicely witli 
wattles and grass, seriously check the ardor of the British ousel. 
Loudly shouting "St. George for merry England!" the English press on 
with dauntless obstinacy, battering the intrenchments with cannon. 
But if the attack is terrible and hard to be resisted, so the defence is 
tierce and stubborn. Hatred of race inflames both armies; personal 
animosity also incites O'Neill and BagnaL At length the bull-dog valor 
of the English succeeds in forcing, not without great sacrifice, the Irish 
intrenchments at one point, and the defenders are driven back. But 
now O'Neill's main body, hitherto skilfully held in reserve, comes to 
the rescue. The bagpipes sound the charge. Wildly and terribly the 
Iribh battle-cries, " Lamh-dearg !" and " O'Donnell aboo!" ring in the 
ears of the Saxon foemen. O'Neill in person "pricks forward" with 
rage and rancor in his heart, seeking on all sides his deadly toe that 
he might slay him. But Bagnal falls by a hand less noble. The mar- 
shal raises the visor of his helmet, the better to mark the aspect of the 
field. Straight a ball crashes through his brain. And now, for the 
English, mishap quickly follows mishap. A cart of gunpowder explodes 
amid their ranks, blowing numbers into fragments and spreading wide 
confusion and dismay. The cavalry of Tyr-Connell and Tyr-Owen are 
on them too in full career. The war-cry of the Tyr-Connell gailow- 
glasses, " Battaillah aboo!" rises fiercely above the battle din. 'Tie 
vain to think of standing against that irresistible charge. Before it the 
whole English army reels and flies in wild disorder and hideous rout 
leaving behind them cannon, standards and treasure. 

John Mitchel gives the following graphic description of the flight 
and pursuit: "The last who resisted was the traitor O'Reilly; twice ho 
tried to rally the flying squadrons, but was slain in 'he attempt; and 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 533 



at last the whole of that fine army was utterly routed, and fled pell-mell 
towards Armagh, with the Irish hanging fiercely on their rear. Amidst 
f he woods and marshes all connection and order were speedily lost ; and, 
us O'Donnell's chronicler has it, they were pursued in couples, in threes, 
in scores, in thirties and in hundreds, and so cut down in detail by 
their avenging pursuers. In one spot especially the carnage was terri- 
ble, and the country people yet point out the lane where that hideous 
rout passed by, and call it to this day the ' Bloody Loaning.' Two thou- 
sand five hundred English were slain in the battle and flight, including 
twenty-three superior officers, besides lieutenants and ensigns. Twelve 
thousand gold-pieces, thirty-four standards, all the musical instruments 
and cannon, with a long train of provision-wagons, were a rich spoil for 
the Irish army. The confederates had only two hundred slain and six 
hundred wounded." 

After three days' investment in Armagh, 1500 fugitive English sur- 
rendered to the Irish. Some of the chieftains would fain have slaught- 
ered them by way of retaliation for the atrocities of the English, but 
O'NeiU's humanity prevailed over these sterner counsels. " The pris- 
oners were disarmed and sent in safety to the pale. Portmore was 
instantly yielded, and its garrison dismissed with the rest." Such was 
the most brilliant passage in the life of Hugh O'Neill. To quote again 
from Mr. Mitchel : " All Saxon soldiery vanished speedily from the fields 
of Ulster, and the Bloody Hand once more waved over the towers of 
JSTewry and Armagh." 

Of course it is quite impossible in a brief summary like the present 
to follow O'JSTeill and O'Donnell through all the varying incidents of their 
days of glory and disaster. For long they were victorious over all 
antagonists. Viceroy after viceroy went down before them. Fitzwil- 
liam, Eussell, De Burgh (who was defeated and killed at the battle of 
Drumfluich), Ormond, but, above all, the queen's brilliant favorite, Es- 
sex, — all these viceroys, together with several generals of distinguished 
bravery and skill, such as JSTorreys, Bagnal and Clifford, failed igno- 
miniously in every effort to subdue the banded tribes of Ireland. Eng- 
land's star of conquest seemed about to pale before the morning star of 
a united Ireland. In Mr. Mitchel's life of Hugh O'JSTeill the reader will 
find ample details, full of interest and animation, of the many glorious 



534 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

achievements of O'Neill, O'Donnell and others of the national leaders. 
There we may lean to estimate O'Neill's skill in warlike stratagems 
and wiles, from the account given of the singular mock-combat between 
two bodies of his own troops (one, in the clothes of slaughtered English- 
men, simulating an English party on their march to relieve leaguered 
Armagh), which drew forth the garrison to help their imagined friends, 
whereupon an ambuscade that O'Neill had planted in a monastery on 
the east of Armagh cut them off from the city. In Mr. Mitchel's book 
all O'Neill's victories on the Blackwater and elsewhere, from Clontibret 
to Beal-an-atha-Buidhe, rise vividly before us. We have vivid pic- 
tures, too, of the victories and fierce raids of O'Donnell, especially of the 
battle of the Curlew Mountains, where fell his brave antagonist, Sii 
Conyers Clifford ; and of the terrible foray on the lands of Thomond, on 
which occasion, during Ins march homewards, he generously restored to 
the suppliant bard, Maoilin Oge, his plundered flocks and herds. The 
brilliant exploit of the brave and faithful Richard Tyrrell — of Norman 
extraction, indeed, yet an Irishman true as steel — in the defile that evei 
since lias borne liis name, where he all but annihilated the Meathiau 
detachment of young Barnewall of Trimleston; the equally brilliant 
exploit of the O'Mores in the Pass of Plumes, where five hundred of Lord 
Essex's rear-guard were cut to pieces; O'Neill's interview with thai 
showy but shallow viceroy; the sketches of all these and numerous 
other scenes and events, with occasional glimpses of the anus and cos- 
tume of the Celtic tribes, both [rish and auxiliar Highland Scotch, th" 
former "enveloped in Long woollen cloaks, which in action they often 
wound round the left hand," and their footmen fighting with "sharp 
battle-axes and short swords ;" while the latter, wearing the clan-tartans, 
wield the redoubtable huge two-handed broadsword, — all these scenes 
and pictures of the life of our forefathers give variety and movement 
to Mr. Mitchel's narrative. 

Meagre as this outline of (Mir past history must necessarily be, I shall 
yet devote a few pages to the scenes disastrous to the Irish cause that 
till the closing years of this war, which has left behind il for Ireland so 
many proud as well as saddening memories. A perception of the true 
uauses of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's final defeat will also give us a 
perfect insight, both with regard to the policy which England has 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTOtU. 535 



nnvaryingly pursued in her dealings with Ireland, and with regard to 
the chief perennial source of weakness among the Irish themselves. 

After such a long series of years, in the course of which so many 
chief governors and military leaders had reaped nothing in their con- 
flicts with O'Neill and O'Donnell save utter defeat and consequent death 
or disgrace, at last there came on the scene to assume control over Eng- 
lish affairs in Ireland a man of altogether different stamp of intellect. 
This was the celebrated Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, at once a man 
of learning and an experienced soldier ; in short, a man of superior craft 
and superior energy, though many, even O'Neill himself, with all his 
penetration, had, before Mountjoy was tested, been deceived into thinking 
him too indolent for successful action. In February of the year 1600 
Mountjoy was appointed lord-deputy. From the moment he landed in 
Ireland the fortune of war and of the old race began to change. In the 
south, where the motives of resistance to England were probably more 
religious than national, he sapped the confederation and seduced men 
from its ranks by his apparently tolerant views. He showed, in Mr 
Mitchel's words, " all the liberality, all the tenderness for Irish Cath- 
olics, that a British minister has never failed to assume when a storm of 
Irish wrath was to be weathered or the hope of Irish nationhood to be 
crushed." He adopted, in short, the policy contained in two pithy pre- 
cepts of Bacon : to weaken the Irish by disunion, and to cheat them by 
a temporary indulgence of their worship. The fear of persecution began 
to die out in the south, and with it the great bond of union between the 
native and Norman Catholics. The same policy, however, would prove 
inadequate for the work of creating divisions in the confederate ranks in 
the northern part of the island, where the war was national rather than 
religious. There the seeds of dissension must be sown by endeavoring 
to seduce prominent men in the great families, with promises of English 
support and recognition, to revolt against their chiefs and set up rival 
?laims of chieftainship. Thus Nial Garbh, "the rugged," enters into 
traitorous correspondence with Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Deny, 
revolts against Red Hugh and lets an English garrison into Lifford. 
Art, son of Tuiiogh Lynnogh, becomes the queen's Sir Arthur O'Neill, 
revolts against the prince of Tyrone, and claims the chieftaincy of the 
O'Neills for himself. Connor Roe Maguire, also being tampered with, 



536 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

stands in the ranks of the enemy as " Queen's Maguire." Nor is this 
plan considered by any means superfluous in Munster either. There the 
lord-president, Sir George Carew, ably combines it with the toleration 
" dodge." He devises means in the most ingenious maimer to set the 
heads of the Irish by the ears, so that " they would prove the most tit 
instruments to ruin one another." Dermot O'Connor was one of the 
leading chiefs of the Munster army. His wife, Lady Margaret, was lis- 
ter to the hapless heir of Desmond, unfortunate Earl Gerald's son, who 
had for years languished in captivity in England. Carew works on this 
lady's jealousy of James — Hugh O'Neill's earl of Desmond, known in 
history as the "Sugan etui" — and wins her to his interests. She in 
turn gains her husband over, aifd he agrees "for a consideration" to 
seize the earl and deliver him to tin.' president. At the same time, to 
help this nefarious plot, Carew addresses a letter to the earl, in which he 
makes the most infamous proposals and promises; he coolly ineites him 
to murder or snare into captivity Dermot O'Connor. The letter is 
extant ; here is a passage from it : "You may rest assured that promises 
shall bee kept; and you shall no sooner bring Dermond (J Connor to me, 
alive or dead, and banish his bownoghs out of the countrie, but von 
shall have your demand satisfied, which 1 thanke God I am both able 
and willing to performe." This letter was put into the hands of O'Con- 
nor, that he might say he had intercepted it, and might represent his 
seizure or assassination of James of Desmond as an act of self-defence 

against a secret foe. This detestable plot had only partial success. 

The earl was taken, but escaped for a time. Eventually, however, he 
was betrayed for a thousand pounds by the White Knight, also a Ger- 
aldine and his kinsman, lie died in the Tower of London. Mr. Mitchel 
tells us that this rascal " president's secretary and historian details with 
much candor — rather, indeed, as a matter of triumph — many other dark 
machinations of his crafty master.'' I regret that want of space will 
not allow me to take farther advantage of this delightful English candor 
and give a few more specimens of Carew's subornings and other villainous 
intrigues. I have said enough, however, to enable the reader to compre- 
hend fully some of the Machiavellian arts by means of which the Eng- 
glish governors gradually undermined the Irish league in Munster and 
elsewhere, so that O'Neill could no longer hide from himself the gloom) 



PBELIMINARY SKETCH OF IEISH HISTORY. 537 

fact that the national party was breaking up, at least in the south. 
Indeed it was now becoming too plain to all, for Oarew "was soon 
enabled to overrun all Desmond, and to reduce, by force or treachery, 
the castles of Askeaton, Glynn, Carrig-a-foyle, Ardart, Liscaghan, Lough- 
gwire, and many others, everywhere driving off the cattle and burning the 
houses and corn-stacks ; so that by the month of December (1600) there 
was not one castle in all Munster held against the queen, nor, in the 
language of Morryson, ' any company of ten rebels together.' " During 
this year (1600), Mountjoy had been lucky in Leinster too. In a skir- 
mish in Leix the gallant O'More, the hero of " the Pass of Plumes," was 
slain. Mountjoy this same year cut down green corn which would have 
grown to be worth ten thousand pounds. Some Leinster chiefs were 
seduced to become traitors to the cause of their country. Treachery 
was in the patriot councils — confidence had vanished. 

Indeed, the military measures of Mountjoy were on a par with his 
civi] policy. They were characterized by consummate skill and con- 
summate cruelty. Large bodies of troops built forts and established 
garrisons at Deny and Ballyshannon. These and other forts, together 
with the treacherous revolt of Mai Garbh O'Donnell, curbed and occu- 
pied Red Hugh, and prevented him from effecting a junction with 
O'Neill, and co-operating with him as of old. Deny also helps to keep 
O'Neill in check. Mountjoy forces his way through the Moyry Pass. 
He cuts down the woods and clears the country all round that difficult 
and dangerous defile ; he also builds a fort at its entrance. Contenting 
himself with this for the present, he retires. On his way to Dublin, 
O'Neill, for whose head he has just offered a reward of two thousand 
pounds, falls on him at the " Pass of Carlingford," and inflicts heavy loss 
on his army ; Mountjoy himself being one of the wounded. Throughout 
the winter the gallant Tyrrell still holds Meath for O'Neill, and defies 
the viceroy, who marches to Trim and Athlone, his track being marked 
everywhere by fire and devastation. 

Next year (1601) Mountjoy again presses hard on O'Neill, and strives 
gradually to hem him in; he constructs new or repairs old works. 
Ulster is filled with his garrisons, strong and abundantly supplied with 
all necessaries ; these from time to time sally forth to burn and ravage, 
above all cutting down and trampling the corn. Mountjoy takes 



538 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

especial care to clear the woods that obstruct the defiles between Newiy 
and the Blackwater, the scenes of so many disasters to the English in 
the earlier period of this war. In spite of O'Neill's untiring activity and 
occasional success in destroying marauding bands of the enemy, even in 
Ulster the gradual encroachments of the tide of conquest are becoming 
more visible every day. The advance of Mountjoy is steady — slow, 
indeed, but sure. Ten thousand English troops are on the soil of 
Ulster. 

O'Neill has still some expectation of receiving succor from Spain. 
For years the Irish had been looking to the kindred Spaniards with 
hope and trust. In 1599 two envoys had come from Don Philip III., 
who had just mounted the throne of Spain ; they brought twenty-two 
thousand pieces of gold from the king, and from the pope indulgences 
for those combating against English heresy and a "Phoenix plume'' 
blessed by the Holy Father; but now nothing short of a large expedition 
could serve or save Ireland. At last about three thousand four hundred 
Spanish soldiers, many of them raw troops quite untrained in the use of 
arms, landed at Kinsale ; a feu years before such a force, making a descent 
on any part of our coast, might have secured Ireland's independence, but 
it was now too late for so small an auxiliary force to be of any real ser- 
vice, especially landing as it did in Minister, where the patriotic struggle 
had died out completely. Had it landed in the north, it might even yet 
have given some chance of final victory to O'Neill. It is true that 
O'Neill and O'Donnell had concurred in the selection of a southern port, 
doubtless considering such a one most accessible to a Spanish licet; but 
it can hardly be doubted that they had expected a much more formid- 
able expedition. They had also relied on the fidelity of the clan Carrha 
and their chief, the MacCarthy More ; never dreaming that without one 
manly blow the entire southern confederacy would in so brief a time 
have yielded to the corrupt and fraudulent arts of Mountjoy and Caiew. 

The worst feature of tin; Spanish expeditionary force was that Don 
Juan d'Aguila, the general commanding it, unlike most of the Spanish 
military chiefs of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centu- 
ries — the proud and palmy period of the Spanish monarchy, when Spain 
boasted that "the sun never set on her empire'' — was, if not faint-hearted, 
at least conceited and incompetent. He was at once discouraged when 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 539 



he saw that none of the people of Munster, save 0' Sullivan Beare, O'Con- 
noi Kerry and O'Driscol, had the patriotism or courage to rise and join 
him. Indeed, some of the high-toned Spaniards conceived an unreason- 
able contempt for the southern Irish, thinking even that "Christ had 
never died " for such a people. Don Juan in a short time let himself be 
shujt up in Kinsale by Mountjoy and Carew, who sat down before that 
town with an army of fifteen thousand men, two-thirds of whom, melan- 
choly to relate, are asserted to have been Irishmen. The towns of 
Munster sent their contingents to swell the queen's array. We find the 
Irish earls of Thomond and Clanrickarde holding high command in the 
English army. The latter, in some of the succeeding operations, distin- 
guished himself more, both for bravery and ferocity, than any one else 
on the English side ; he is even said to have killed with his own hand, 
at the battle of Kinsale, twenty of the Irish, and to have cried out to 
spare "no rebels." Carew compliments him by saying that "no man 
did bloody his sword more than his lordship that day." 

At the call of Don Juan d'AguD.a, O'Neill, at the head of between 
three and four thousand troops, and O'Donnell, at the head of two thou- 
sand five hundred men, at once march southward, in order, if possible, 
to raise the siege of Kinsale and form a junction with the Spaniards. 
O'Djnnell, though he leaves his principality in a state of confusion and 
peril, hurries on without losing an hour, and arrives first at Holycross, the 
place appointed for a rendezvous with O'Neill. Mountjoy, like a skillful 
general, detaches Carew with a strong force to try and crush O'Donnell 
before O'Neill can join him. O'Donnell is too weak to give battle, and 
is reluctant to give up the object of his march southward by retreating 
on Ulster ; yet how is he to elude Carew by a forced march over Slieve 
Felim into Limerick, when recent heavy rains have made the mountains 
and morasses impassable for horses and carriages ? Most luckily, one 
night's hard frost renders even the boggy places for a brief time pass- 
able; O'Donnell waits for darkness, and then marches all night; by 
morn O'Donnell is far away. The escape and prodigious celerity of 
'• this light-footed general" amaze the baffled Carew. However, he fails 
not to exert himself strenuously, but all his energy is thrown away. 
The loss is not to be redeemed ; 'tis vain any longer to think of inter- 
cepting O'Donnell. Cs* v^vf admits that the one day's march of O'Don* 



540 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

nell from O'Meagher's country to dome, thirty-two Irish miles, is "the 
greatest march that hath been heard of." High praise this, coming 
; rom so bitter an enemy. 

O'Donnell reaches Castlehaven in time to join seven hundred newly- 
arrived Spaniards, intended to reinforce D.'Aguila. And now some signs 
of life appear among a few of the southern elans. Donough O'Driscol, 
Sir Finnan O'Driscol and Donal O'Sullivan receive Spanish garrisons 
into their castles and declare manfully for their country's cause. Mean- 
while, the English press the siege of Kinsale vigorously. The Spaniards 
hold out stoutly; they make several bold sorties; numbers are killed 
on both sides. The English strain every nerve to capture the town, if 
possible, before O'Neill can come to relieve it ; the Spaniards strain 
every nerve to keep the enemy at bay, and keep possession of the town 
until his arrival. Meanwhile, by extraordinary efforts, the great Ulster 
chief gets together aboul four thousand men, and lights his way through 
Westmeath; joined by the untiring Tyrrell he makes a rapid march to 
the south-west and effects a junction with O'Donnell and a portion of 
the small body of Spaniards recently landed at Castlehaven. O'Neill 
and the Irish army now cut Mount joy off from his supplies; the besiege] 
is himself besieged. Still, the odds against the Irish are too great; 
against Mountjoy's fifteen thousand the Irish cannot muster seven thou- 
sand men; yet the English are in a critical position — between two fires, 
so to speak. The Spaniards are still formidable, the Irish still resolute 
and animated by the memories of several years of victory. Sickness and 
the frequent desertions of their soldiers of Irish race thin the ranks of 
the Englisharmy; the severity of the season, privations, constanl skir- 
mishing are sure to waste them. O'Neill's plan was to persevere in 
besieging the besiegers till their strength should be exhausted (his 
own troops, meanwhile, gradually regaining the energy lost in their [ate 
fatigues), and that then both Spaniards and Irish, combining their ope- 
rations, should suddenly fall on the worn-out English and complete their 
destruction. This was obviously the prudent course for the confederates 
to adopt, but O'Donnell w;is too impetuous to bide his lime patiently, 
and Don John, lacking the indomitable will and endurance of a heroic 
commander, was unwilling to bear the brunt of the siege any longer. 
The English deluded him with false representations. O'Neill, impor- 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY 541 

tuned on all sides, was compelled to give a reluctant consent to attempt 
a night-attack on the British entrenchments. There is reason to believe 
that an officer high in his confidence betrayed his plans to the enemy. 
On the fatal night of the 3d of January, 1602 (new style), the Iiish 
inarched in three divisions ; the extreme darkness seemed to favor their 
design, but the guides lost their way ; hence the attack was delayed, 
till at length morning was approaching. The English were on the 
alert before daybreak. In short, the Irish, thinking to surprise the Eng- 
lish, were themselves surprised. Don Juan d'Aguila and his Spanish 
garrison either failed to sally forth, or did so feebly and without effect. 
Some of O'Neill's cavalry and the troops under the brave Tyrrell made 
a gallant stand ; the Spaniards, also, who had joined O'Donnell at Cas- 
tlehaven, disdaining to fiy, were almost entirely cut to pieces on the field 
of battle ; but these instances of valor were all unavailing : the Irish 
army was totally defeated, and the capitulation of Don Juan d'Aguila 
and his troops followed shortly after. 

Three days after this disastrous battle of Kinsale, O'Donnell took 
ship for Spain ; there he was received with the highest honors by king, 
nobles and people ; he did all he could to persuade the king to send 
a fresh expedition to the aid of Ireland. At first, Philip seemed disposed 
to accede to his entreaties, but subsequently the preparations for a fresh 
descent in force were countermanded. Again, with heart and brain on 
fire, O'Donnell was hurrying to the court of Spain to renew his almost 
hopeless suit, when, at Simancas, two leagues from Valladolid, "his 
proud heart broken," he found rest from all further struggles and disap' 
pointments in death. The king ordered him to be buried with royal 
honors, and the hero's bones lie in the chapter of the cathedral of St. 
Francis in the city of Valladolid. 

Meanwhile, Hugh O'Neill after his defeat had retreated to the north, 
where he determined to make his final stand. During the spring 
Mountjoy wa^ occupied in trying to effect the reduction of Munstei, 
which, with the aid of the perfidious and cruel Carew, he succeeded in 
accomplishing, in spite of the gallant front shown to the foe by 0' Sulli- 
van Beare and O'Neill's active lieutenant, the valiant and faithful Tyrrell, 
and the noble defence of 0' Sullivan Beare' s castle of Dunbuidhe by the 
indomitable Mac Geoghegan. Once more Munster saw its lands and corn 



542 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



wasted and destroyed, its wide extent covered with blood and ashes and 
desolation ; but Ulster too was about to have her turn of " fire, famine and 
slaughter." Early in June, Mountjoy advanced northward to Armagh, 
and thence to Dungannon. O'Neill prepared for his last desperate 
struggle by setting fire to his town and castle of Dungannon ; then he 
betook himself to the forest and mountain-fastnesses in the centre of his 
territory ; 

" And backward to the den of his despair 
The forest-monarch shrinks, and finds no lair." 

But it is unnecessary in this brief sketch to dwell on the melancholy 
closing scenes of this noble struggle for Irish independence, which, if it 
had succeeded, would have made Ireland compact and strong; for, as I 
have already said, this great O'Neill had in his capacious soul the large 
idea of a united Irish nation. There is little reason to doubt that he 
would, if victorious, have introduced into Ireland the Spanish military 
discipline, then the first in the world, and would have welded into one 
great and well-consolidated monarchy the jarring elements of the Irish 
population. But alas! this was not to be; it was otherwise written in 
the book of fate. Vainly O'Neill gallantly stands at bay for months of 
sore struggle and sacrifice ; vainly his faithful clansmen resist the gold 
and treacherous lures of the Saxon, spit upon all offers of reward for his 
betrayal, and suffer and die heroically for their beloved chief and their 
dear old Celtic customs and rights. Like fiends incarnate, Mountjoy 
and his Saxon soldiers — and, worse still, his queen's O'Reillys and 
queen's Maguires — cut dow r n the green corn, trampling it under foot 
and leaving it to rot, and devastate the entire country. In the woods 
of Glan-con-keane, with only six hundred infantry and aboul sixty horse, 
O'Neill makes his last stand, and thrusts back the foe through the whole 
winter; but he hears that Connaught too is subdued. Where is he now 
to look for succor? What hope is there remaining of help, either at 
home or from foreign lands? Besides, his people are everywhere dying 
of famine. Moryson, who w r as with Mountjoy's army, tells us "thai 
no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especialh 
of wasted countries, than to see multitudes of the poor people dead, with 
their mouths all colored green by eating nettles, dock and all things 
they could rend up above ground." Chichester and Sir Kobert Moiyson 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 543 



on one occasion this winter " saw a horrible spectacle — three children, 
the eldest not above ten years old, all eating and gnawing with their 
teeth the entrails of their dead mother, on whose flesh they had fed for 
twenty days past." Again : Moryson tells us, on the authority of Cap- 
tain Trevor, one of the English officers, how some old women are making 
a fire in a field near Newry, " and divers little children driving out the 
cattle in the cold mornings, coming thither to warm them, are by them 
surprised and killed and eaten." Is it then wonderful that O'Neill, 
seeing his land and people a prey to such desolation and horrors, at last 
despairs ? Surely all immediate prospect of winning his country's lib- 
erty is at an end. The sole chance left for Ireland is to save the rem- 
nant of the old race for better times. On the 30th of March, 1603, 
O'Neill, now sixty years old, worn in frame and stricken in heart, on 
bended knees submitted to the lord-deputy at Mellifont. Ireland seems, 
at last, about to be Anglicised and her conquest made complete. 

Yet O'Neill surrendered on good terms, all things considered. The 
queen was anxious to win his submission at any price, for, even reduced 
to such terrible straits, he was still a formidable foe. Just about this 
time the illustrious virgin-vixen died. James VI. of Scotland, who suc- 
ceeded her as James I. of England, confirmed the favorable conditions 
granted to O'Neill. He, indeed, and the chiefs his allies, were to give up 
their Celtic chieftainships and surrender their lands to the crown ; but 
they were to receive full pardon, and with certain reservations to have 
the whole of the lands held by their several clans regranted to them by 
royal "letters-patent." O'Neill, restored in blood in spite of attainder 
and outlawry, was reinstated in his earldom of Tyrone. Roderick 
O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother and successor, was created earl of Tyr- 
Connell. The enjoyment of full and free exercise of their religion was 
granted alike to chiefs and people. Such was the termination of Hugh 
O'Neill's memorable struggle for Irish freedom. 

But I need hardly add that all these conditions were before long vio- 
lated by the English; robbery and persecution were soon "let slip" 
again upon the Irish. In 1607 a charge of conspiracy, real or pre- 
tended, was trumped up against O'Neill and Earl Roderick; they felt 
that their lives were in danger. O'Neill had before this complained of 
the base espionage to which he was subjected — "that he had so many 



544 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

eves watching over him that he could not drink a full carouse of sack 
but the state was advertised thereof a few hours after." It was hard for 
the proud spirit of O'Neill to have to endure a state of things like this ; 
still, he yielded to necessity, and bore on in peace till, in 1607, he and 
Earl Roderick, finding their lives in jeopardy, decided on flying from 
their country. They, their relatives and numerous other friends, em- 
barked at Rathinullen, on the shores of Lough Swilly, on the 11th of 
September, 1607, and gazed from the ship, for the last time, on the hind 
for which they had fought so many battles. Landing in Normandy, they 
afterward visited Flanders; finally, the weary-hearted exiles found 
refuge in Rome. Here they lived on a pension from the pope and the 
king of Spain. In his old age the illustrious chief of Tyr-Owen became 
blind ; he died in the year 1616. 

After the flight of the earls all their vast possessions were seized by 
the crown; six counties in lister were confiscated. Grants of lands 
were made to a host of Scotch and English " undertakers." A'ast estates 
wen- parceled out among London companies and guilds. This "plan- 
tation of Ulster," as it was called, was the origin of the great admixture 
of Scottish blood which we find in all the counties of Ulster. To this 
day we hear in that province a modification of the Scotch accent, and 
we ran trace in the inhabitants some of t lie peculiar traits of the Scot- 
tish character and habits; yet the old Celtic element still preponderates. 
If any projects for exterminating the Datives had been entertained, they 

failed miserably; the natives in their depressed state increased and mul- 
tiplied more than the favored colonists, dames I. also granted lands to 
the Established Church and to Trinity College — two institutions thor- 
oughly anti-Irish in their tendency; the latter had been founded in the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, during the viceroyalty of the corrupt Fitzwil- 
Iiam, on the site of tin? suppressed monastery of All-Hallows. The great 
and peculiar hardship of these Irish confiscations consisted in the fact 
that not merely the chiefs, who became obnoxious to the English rulers, 
were thereby despoiled of their estates, but all the people composing 
their tribes were robbed at the same time, and reduced to penury; for, 
by the old Irish law, all the lands ruled by each chief, so far from being 
his exclusive or absolute property, were the property of the entire tribe, 
and liable on certain occasions to redistribution. A system like this 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 545 

wanting fixed appropriation of land, seems not very favorable to agri- 
culture. Indeed, some writers, considering these old Celtic land tenures 
and certain other Celtic customs to be incompatible with a high state 
of refinement and civilization, seem, in reviewing these wars of Ireland, 
always to regard the English as the champions of civilization, and. the 
cause of Ireland as identical with that of barbarism, if not savagery, 
and consequently to look upon its loss or ruin as something not to be 
regretted by the wise. Sir Archibald Alison, as might be expected, 
talks of the Irish as always resisting civilization ; but it is somewhat 
strange to find even Moore, while he cannot withhold a certain amount 
of sympathy from the patriotic struggles of his countrymen, at the same 
time seeming to be troubled with some misgivings as to whether he 
ought not to contemplate with satisfaction the successes of England as 
the triumphs of civilization; he seems, in short, for ever in doubt 
whether he should call the Irish, fighting for their own, patriots or 
rebels. Apparently it seldom or never occurs to these "philosophic 
historians" that a country like Ireland pays a trifle too dearly even for 
civilization if the price be the extermination of her brave children > cr 
that if she should succeed in throwing off the yoke and driving out her 
civilizing oppressors, her own sons might compensate her for the loss of 
a foreign by the development of a high and refined native civilization. 
If O'Neill, for instance, had succeeded in his efforts for Irish independ- 
ence, why might not he and his successors have gradually abolished 
such Celtic institutions as stood in the way of what is nicknamed 
"progress," and developed a new Irish civilization, better adapted to 
modern ideas and requirements than the old forms could be ? In the 
portion of his " Norman Conquest " that refers to our grand struggle for 
more than seven hundred years against the English sway, the great 
French historian Thierry shows a far profounder insight and knowledge 
of the real spirit and teaching of Irish history, and manifests broader and 
more generous sympathies with our people, than any other historian, 
whether foreign or Irish. He glorifies that noble struggle of our race, 
only paralleled by the Spanish struggle of nine hundred years against 
the Moors ; calls the fidelity of generation after generation of Irishmen 
to a cause ever lost, the son with little hope of success taking up and 
bearing aloft in battle the standard trampled on by the foe in the days 



546 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



of his sire, and then, when defeated in turn, still handing down the old 
quarrel to his son, — Thierry, I say, calls this unconquerable tenacity of 
the Irish, this immortal clinging to the hopes of one day winning their 
independence, one of the noblest and most touching things in all history. 
He quotes with applause the heroic words of Donald O'Neill in his letter 
addressed to Pope John XXII. in the fourteenth century : " Hatred pro- 
duced by lengthened recollections of injustice, by the murder of our 
fathers, brothers and kindred, and which will not be extinguished in our 
time nor in that of our sons." From the days of this " plantation of Ul- 
ster " the war of races in Ireland, which Thierry places in so clear a light, 
became more and more envenomed. Eeligious rage and hate, too, waxed 
bitterer. The only actual rebellion, however, during James I.'s reign, 
was the revolt of the gallant young chief of Innishowen, Sir Cahir 
O'Dogherty, who met with considerable success at first, but was killed 
a few months after he took the field. 

I have dwelt on the rebellions of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and the 
consequences that flowed from them, longer than to some may appear 
warrantable in a brief summary like the present. If I have done so, it 
is because I am inclined to think that in these wars all the glorious 
and all the hideous features of Irish history are more conspicuous than 
in any of the struggles of earlier or more recent date. In the Eliz- 
abethan wars you have the most shining examples of Irish patriotic 
resistance, the most striking illustrations of that great curse of the Irish 
race, dissension, and the most vivid pictures of English fraud and fero- 
city. Moreover, in the events of Elizabeth's and James's reigns the 
seeds of the most important occurrences of later generations were sown. 
In the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns and in that of .lames I. a total 
revolution gradually took place in the tonus of Irish society. The old 
Celtic usages and manners and costume disappeared, and the found- 
ations of our modern society, with its very different customs, were laid. 
English laws superseded the Brehon code. The English language began 
its struggle with the Gaelic. The distinction between the pale and the 
Irish territories virtually disappeared, though we still sometimes hear 
the lords of the pale spoken of. Theoretically, at least, the mere Irish 
are at length presumed to be entitled to the rights and privileges of the 
king's subjects of English blood. In short, in James's reign, for th« 



PEELIMINAEY SKETCH OF IEISH HISTOEY. 547 



first time, Ireland, superficially at least, wears the aspect of a subdued 
and Anglicised country. I may here observe that the union of the Scot- 
tish and English crowns was undoubtedly a great misfortune for the cause 
of Irish independence. An independent Scotland would occasionally 
prove an ally to Ireland or create for Irish insurgents a seasonable 
diversion. 

It is by no means necessary, then, that I should do much more than 
refer to the subsequent wars of 1641 and those that arose out of the 
Revolution of 1688. The tyrannical but able administration of Went- 
worth, better known as the earl of Strafford, by intensifying the sense 
of intolerable wrong in the hearts and souls of the Irish, prepared the 
way for the outbreak of 1641. Strafford's extortions, frauds and tyran- 
nies in Ireland also enabled the English House of Commons to swell the 
charges which served them as a pretext for bringing him to the scaffold 
when they commenced their memorable quarrel with his equally ill-starred 
master, Charles I. The wars in Ireland which followed the insurrection 
of 1641 are, in a great degree, a repetition of the old story. We have 
atrocities on both sides. We have fractions of the Irish race giving tne 
English, assisted by other sections of the Irish race, the utmost trouble 
to subdue them. We have, indeed, in these campaigns, a most extraor- 
dinary amount of "confusion worse confounded." We have two English 
parties in Ireland in arms against the native Irish party, and at the 
same time hostile to each other — that of the king and that of the Eng- 
lish Puritan Parliament. We have a section of the so-called Irish reb- 
els professing loyalty to the king and hostility to the English Parliament. 
We have another section open enemies to every person and thing Eng- 
lish. The pope's legate, Einuccinni, is chiefly sustained by this subdi- 
vision. I omit to notice all minute shades and distinctions of party. 
The myth of the famous "Kilkenny cats" is almost realized. At one 
time, in the course of this struggle, we find in Ireland about fourteen 
armies in the field. This war was the natural result of "the plantation 
of Ulster." Bishop Mant, however, in his Church history, can only see 
in the outbreak of 1641 an instance of the retributive justice of Prov- 
idence on account of the guilty connivance at popery on the part of 
English rulers in Ireland during a portion of the administration of 
Blount (Lord Mountjoy). Among the principal military leaders who 



548 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

appeared in this war three are conspicuous. Two of these are Irish; 
the third English. Of the Irish, the marquis of Ormond, like most of 
the race of the Butlers, fights for the king of England against the cause 
of Ireland. The other eminent Irishman, Owen Roe O'iSTeill (a truly 
great man, even according to the admission of writers in no degree 
friendly or just to the Irish or their cause), rivals the most glorious of 
Ireland's patriots and chiefs of eveiy age. He wins a victory over 
Munro and his Scots greater and more memorable than any victory over 
British troops won in Ireland before or since. I allude to the victory of 
Benburb, achieved on the 5th of June, 16-16, which gave Owen Koe pos- 
session of all Ulster. At one period of this war Ireland seemed indeed 
on the point of assuming the aspect of a nation. The Confederation of 
Kilkenny at first appears to promise glorious results. The General 
Assembly wears the short-lived semblance of a veritable National 
Assembly. A great seal is struck; a mint is established; there arc 
printing-presses for publication of ordinances; some admirable enact- 
ments for encouragement of foreign commerce are passed ; arrangements 
for the management of internal affairs, both military ami civil, arc made; 
some of these are judicious; others, such as the division of the Catholic 
army of Ireland into several independent commands, fatal. With all 
the shortcomings of the Confederation of Kilkenny, during the sitting 
of the General Assembly towards the close of L642 Ireland was more 
like a nation than she had ever been before. But, as usual, accursed 
dissension ruined everything; and. mosl unfortunately for the Irish 
cause, Owen Roe dies at Cloughouter Castle, in Cavan, on the 6th of 
November, 1649, not without suspicion of poison. After his death 
there remained no one in Ireland lit to cope with Cromwell, the terrible 
and renowned general of the English Parliamentarians. He mercilessly 
crushes, for the time, the Irish and their cause in blood and tire. Fain 
would he send the whole Irish race "to hell or Connaught." Famine 
and the sword once more mow down the Irish. Fresh confiscations, on 
an enormous scale, follow Cromwell's triumph. Fresh seeds of hatred 
and vengeance are sown in the souls of the Irish. Additional memories 
of wrong are borne along on the stream of time, even down to our own 
days. The hostility of rival races and religions is keener than ever. 
In the reign of Charles II. little was done to repair the violence and 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OP IRISH HISTORY. 549 

wrong inflicted on the Irish by the Commonwealth. The acts of settle- 
ment and explanation gave scant justice to Catholics ; indeed, it is said 
that about this period five thousand Catholic Irish, never outlawed, were 
shut out by law from possession of their lands. In this reign the judicial 
murder of the venerable and exemplary Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic 
primate of Ireland, took place in London. 

After the Cromwellian wars we begin to hear of the Irish tories and 
rapparees, of whom Redmond O'Hanlon and Galloping O'Hogan w T ere 
among the most famous or notorious. These tories and rapparees are 
not to be classed with ordinary robbers or brigands ; they are, in truth, 
the last remains of the patriotic resistance of those times, Celtic valor 
reduced to a half-combative, half-fugitive condition ; soldiers gradually 
acquiring the predatory habits of the ordinary outlaw. There are many 
parallel cases in the history of other lands and times ; thus, as Thierry 
in his "Norman Conquest" shows, Here ward, and later, Robin Hood 
and others, with their bands of outlaws, were the last remains of the 
more regular Saxon resistance to the Norman conquest. Perhaps some 
of the bands of Neapolitan brigands in Murat's reign were of the same 
stamp ; Rob Roy Macgregor too and his clan are to be looked on rather 
as waging an irregular warfare of vengeance against rulers and laws and 
a society, in short, that had ruthlessly proscribed and tyrannized over 
them, than in the odious light of an ordinary captain and band of rob- 
bers; probably, if Napoleon the Great had succeeded in conquering 
Spain, many of the guerilla corps in that country would have gradually 
degenerated till they became in time little better than mere predatory 
bands. The rapparees seem to have taken part in the Williamite wars 
on the side of James II. as partisan troops. 

On the English side a far more repulsive class of individuals arose in 
Ireland in those sad times — a class which then, or at a later period, re- 
ceived the hideous appellation of the head-cutters ; we find some of them 
so late as the early part of the eighteenth century ; these wretches used, 
for various amounts of blood-money, to hunt to the death tories, rappa- 
rees and other persons of Irish race obnoxious to the British government, 
and bring in their heads. Captain Adam Loftus and Lieutenant Fran- 
cis Rowleston earned money in this diabolical way ; Johnstone, of the 
Fews, in Armagh, and one Pepper, the murderer of Patrick Fleming, 



550 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 

the last baron of Slane, are two of the most notorious among the head 
cutters. 

The Williamite wars present to our view most of the principal fea- 
tures of former Irish wars against the English. In the first place, we see 
a portion of the Irish nation contending once more for freedom against 
the might of England, assisted by a different section of Irishmen ; on 
this occasion England has also a powerful auxiliary force of foreigners; 
yet against all these odds Ireland for three years bore up so gallantly 
that it was with the utmost difficulty England finally prevailed over 
her. When in all these Irish wars we see a fraction, greater or less, of 
the Irish race contending with the whole power of England, assisted by 
other Irish, and yet winning many victories and keeping the English 
forces at hay for long years, and in the end hardly conquered, the ques- 
tion irresistibly forces itself on us, What would have been the result of 
anyone of those struggles if Ireland had been united? If the Irish 

were to-day, or at any period, united as one man againsl the English, 
England's hold on Ireland would not be worth one month's purchase, 
seeing thai a mere fraction of the race can always pul British suprem- 
acy in the greatest peril. We have even seen the small tribe of the 
O'Byrnes in the glens of Wicklow, under Fiach Mae Hugh, maintaining 
their independence in the teeth, so to speak, of Dublin Castle, centuries 
alter Henry [I. 'a invasion, and even during the vigorous reign of Eliz- 
abeth. Schamyl'a defiance for years in our own century of 2<h),000 
Muscovite soldiers in the Caucasus was not a greater teat than this, rela- 
tively. A district equal to the whole of Wicklow would not be missed 
out of Rhode Island, the smallesl state of the American Onion, and 
of Wicklow the territory of the O'Byrnes formed only a portion. It 
may then lie boldly affirmed thai Ireland, it" true to herself, ought at 
any time to be able to drive the English garrisons into the sea The 
wars of William were attended, like former Irish wars, with varying for- 
tune. Deny and the Boyne are boasted of by the English party. The 
first siege of Athlone, and. slid more, the firsl siege of Limerick, are the 
pride and glory of the Irish. The second siege of Limerick and the hat- 
tie of Aughrim, in spite of the final even! in each case, are perhaps more 
glorious for the Irish than for the English. Aughrim, it is next to cer- 
tain, would have been an Irish victory bul for the chance ball, if chance 



PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 551 

it were, that carried off the head of the marquis of St. Euth. A few 
moments before the fatal stroke he declared that the Irish infantry were 
immortalizing themselves, and that he would speedily drive the English 
before him to the gates of Dublin. In this war the English were some- 
what less bloody and cruel than in their other Irish wars. However, it 
was followed by the usual amount of confiscations. The treaty of Lim- 
erick, which brought the struggle to a close, seemed at first to secure 
protection and the free exercise of their religion to the Catholies of Ire- 
land. But its conditions were subsequently most shamefully violated. 
In breach of all good faith the terrible penal code was established, which 
for almost a century deprived the Catholic body of Ireland of all civil 
rights. During the greater part of the eighteenth century they were ab- 
solutely deprived of political existence ; in fact, throughout that dreary 
time the real Irish nation disappears from history, except as soldiers in 
the ranks of foreign armies. During this period Irish adventurers (the 
"wild-geese" as they were styled) reaped immortal laurels in the cele- 
brated " Irish Brigade " in the service of kindred France, and on Fonte- 
noy and other hard-fought battle-fields of Continental Europe drove the 
ianks of their hated hereditary foe before them in wildest rout and ruin. 
After I commence O'Connell's life I shall find occasion to speak in detail 
of the various penal enactments and their subsequent relaxation; also, 
to give some pictures illustrative of the manner in which they colored 
and influenced life in Ireland while they remained in force. Hardly any 
relaxation of this grim and infernal code had taken place when O'Con- 
nell was born, in 1775. 

Reverting for a moment to the Williamite wars, the episode of the 
arrival of Baldeargh O'Donnell and his enthusiastic reception by the 
people of Donegal as chief of Tyr-Connell, after an interval of more than 
eighty years since the flight of their last chief, Earl Roderick, is singu- 
larly illustrative of the Celtic tenacity of old traditions and memories. 
Macaulay, in his usual style of caricature or ridicule, gives an account 
of this restoration of a dynasty, as he sneeringly calls it. He says, 
however, that the interest felt by the Irish in the fortunes of Baldeargh 
was much more lively and genuine than that which they felt in King 
James II. By the way, it is curious enough that, in spite of the strong 
dislike and prejudice which Macaulay entertains towards Ireland and 



552 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 



the Irish, almost the only person in his great work whom this Lesage 
of history shows in a truly honorable light is the gallant Sarsfield. 
Macaulay never once denies the manliness, honor, generosity, patriot- 
ism and courage of Sarsfield, while for nearly all the remarkable Eng- 
lish soldiers and sailors and statesmen and divines he has little better 
appellations to bestow than liar, rogue, scoundrel, double-dyed traitor 
and coward. In truth, his book might justly be called a sort of his- 
torical Gil Bias, for its main interest consists in its profusion of brilliant 
and spicy sketches of the profound rascality of nearly all the English 
public characters, Whig as well as Tory, in the days of the "happy and 
glorious " Revolution of 1688. 

And indeed, it may be reasonably doubted whether Macaulay's is not 
the only way to make the larger portion of modern English history 
really interesting, particularly the history of 1688. There are fewer 
lofty and magnanimous characters in English history than in almost 
any other. But there was an especial dearth of noble men in England 
about the epoch of this Revolution of 1688. Even Mordaunt, after- 
wards earl of Peterborough, was more grandiose than truly grand. 
Besides, he was crooked in mind. To write, then, the history of that 
time in a strain of enthusiasm would be quite an absurd mistake, the 
like of which Macaulay rarely falls into. In the case of the trial of the 
seven Church-of-England bishops, indeed, he tries to lash himself into an 
elevated vein, but the enthusiasm is hardly genuine. How could it be so? 
Those bishops did not care one sixpence for popular liberty; in truth, 
as their subsequent conduct showed, they disliked it. and were prepared 
to oppose revolution at almost any personal sacrifice. As patriots they 
were thorough shams. They were complete slaves to the abject doctrine 
of the indefeasible divine right of kings. If, for a brief space, they 
ventured to resist as arbitrary mandate of James, it was simply because 
he had wounded and roused to a high pitch of wrath their feelings of 
bigotry against Catholics and other non-conformists by tiying to force 
them to read to their congregations his letter or declaration of toleration. 
In short, Macaulay's rhetoric in telling the story of the bishops wants 
the genuine ring of sincerity; and he hits on the true method of mak- 
ing his history of the Revolution of 1688 interesting when he imitates 
the subject-matter and style of a Spanish pfcaresco novel. 



PRELIMINARY 3KE10H OF IRISH HISTORY. 553 

In concluding this summary, I may remark that, according to some 
calculations, the whole soil of Ireland has been confiscated about six 
times over. In a land so tormented with crvil strife and liable to changes 
of all sorts, the new landed proprietors, introduced by each fresh revo- 
lution, would naturally feel the possession of their ill-got estates inse- 
cure. Hence they would make haste to wring all they could from their 
wretched tenants. No sentiments of sympathy or kindliness would 
grow up between landlord and tenant. The mutual bad feeling would 
be inherited from their sires by succeeding generations of proprietors 
and tenants. The antagonism of race would thrive more and more each 
day. And thus it came to pass in Ireland that even when the time 
arrived in which his possession was perfectly secure, the Irish landlord 
continued to oppress and extort from his tenant, and at the same time 
to fear the "wl justice" of his revenge. 



[For the events from the close of this Chapter to 1848, see Life of O'ConnelL] 



